How to become a precinct committeeman and take over your county party

The Republican Party is not a building in Washington. It is not a logo, a chairman on television, or a fundraising email. It is a pyramid of volunteers, and the bottom row of the pyramid is often half empty. The people who run campaigns, the people who run cable shows and the people who run for Congress all know it, and most voters never learn it. In some places a seat that helps pick the county chairman is won by a few dozen votes, or by nobody, because nobody filed. If you have ever said "somebody ought to do something about the party," I can give you the good news and the bad news in one sentence. You are somebody.

This is a walkthrough, so it is built from steps. But the first thing to understand is the name, because the job has a different name in almost every state. Precinct committeeman, precinct committeewoman, precinct chair, precinct captain, precinct delegate, committeeperson, county committee member, ward leader. They are all versions of the same idea: the elected or appointed Republican who represents a few hundred or a few thousand voters at the lowest rung of the party, and who gets a vote on who leads the next rung up. Throughout this post I will say "precinct committeeman" to cover them all, and I mean the women who hold the job as well. Wherever your state uses a different word, use that one when you call the office.

One warning before step one. Parties are creatures of state law and of their own written bylaws, and both differ a great deal from state to state. Nothing below is a substitute for reading your own state's rules. What I can give you is the order of operations and the questions to ask.

Step 1: Find out what the job is called where you live

Start with a single question you can answer in an evening: how does my state fill the bottom seats of the Republican Party?

There are three broad answers. In some states the seat is elected on the primary ballot, so the way to hold it is to file as a candidate and win. Texas and Pennsylvania work that way, with precinct-level party offices appearing on the primary ballot, and several other states do something similar. In other states the seat is chosen at a meeting, such as a precinct caucus or a county organizing convention held in a set window after the primary. And in some places the county party's own bylaws let the county chairman or the executive committee fill vacancies by appointment, which is how many empty precincts get staffed between elections.

You can find this out in three places, and you should check all three because they sometimes disagree in practice:

1. The secretary of state or the state election division. Search the site for "party committee," "precinct committee," "precinct delegate" or "candidate filing guide." The filing guide for the primary will list party offices that appear on the ballot, with their deadlines.
2. Your county election office. This is the office that actually takes the paperwork. A phone call to the clerk or the elections director costs nothing, and a good clerk will tell you what the seat is called, what form to use and when the window closes.
3. Your county Republican Party. Ask for the bylaws and the current roster. A party that is proud of its organization will send them. A party that will not tell you who holds the precinct seats has told you something important.

Write down what you learn in one sentence: "In my county the seat is called ___, it is filled by ___, the window opens ___ and closes ___." If you cannot fill in the blanks after the three calls, keep calling.

Step 2: Read the county party's bylaws

I know. Bylaws. Stay with me, because this is where the power is.

The bylaws of a county party answer the questions that decide who runs the place. How many people sit on the county committee? Does each precinct get one vote or two? Is the vote weighted by how many Republicans voted in that precinct last time? Who elects the county chairman, and when? Who can fill a vacancy, and for how long? What is the quorum for a meeting? Can members vote by proxy? How are delegates to the state convention chosen? How is the bylaws amendment process run, and who can propose one?

Here is a worked example, labelled as a hypothetical, so you can see why the numbers matter. Picture a county with 120 precincts and a rule of two committee members per precinct. That is 120 times 2, or 240 seats. A majority of the full committee is 121 votes, because half of 240 is 120 and you need one more. Now suppose that when the county chairman is elected, only 160 of the 240 seats are filled and everyone shows up. A majority of those present is 81, because half of 160 is 80 and you need one more. Eighty-one people decide who leads the party for the term. And if the bylaws allow a quorum of, say, a third of the seated members, a meeting with a small turnout can bind everyone.

That is the whole point of this walkthrough in two paragraphs of arithmetic. The fewer seats are filled, the fewer people it takes to control the outcome. A county with every seat full is harder to capture and harder to ignore. A county with half the seats vacant is a county where a well-organized group of fifty can matter more than a thousand donors.

Mark up the bylaws as you read. Highlight the term of office, the quorum, the voting rules for chairman, the vacancy process and the date of the organizing meeting. Those five items are the whole game.

Step 3: Check your own eligibility

Before you file anything, make sure you qualify. The requirements are usually short but they are strict, and a mistake here can cost you the seat after you have done the work.

1. Residence. In most places you must live in the precinct you are running to represent, and for a certain period before filing or before taking office. A move across the street can matter if the precinct line runs between you and your neighbour. Find your precinct on the county election office's lookup tool, and do not trust a map from a campaign mailer.
2. Registration. You will almost certainly need to be a registered voter, and in many states a registered Republican, or a voter who has voted in the Republican primary, for a stated period. Check your own registration first. If it lapsed when you moved, fix it today, and see our walkthrough on registration questions in Can I vote in the Republican primary? Your registration questions answered.
3. Party rules. Some bylaws add conditions, such as not holding a conflicting party office, or signing a statement of support for the party's platform or its nominees. Read them. If you disagree with a condition, say so in the amendment process, but meet it first.
4. Age and citizenship. These track the ordinary voter rules.

If you are not sure whether you meet a requirement, ask the election office in writing and keep the reply.

Step 4: File, and file on time

Now the part that kills more campaigns than any opponent: the calendar.

If the seat is on the primary ballot, there is a filing window set by state law. It is a window with two dates, an opening and a closing, and it is not a suggestion. The closing date does not move because you were busy, your car broke down or the office was closed for lunch. Put both dates in your phone and on the refrigerator. File in the first few days, not the last. If something is wrong with your form, you want time to cure it.

What you will usually need:

• A candidate form or application for a place on the ballot, obtained from the county election office or the state filing guide, or in a few places from the county party.
• A filing fee, a petition with signatures, or both, or neither. For party offices at the precinct level the fee is often small or zero and the signature requirement is low, but this varies enormously. Ask what the requirement is for your exact office, not for "candidates in general."
• An oath or affidavit that you meet the requirements. Read it before you sign it, because you are swearing to it.
• Any required campaign registration. Many states do not require a committee registration for a tiny party-office race with no spending, but some do once you cross a dollar threshold. Ask.

If the seat is filled at a meeting, the equivalent of filing is showing up early to the right meeting with the right credentials. You may need to be on a roster in advance. Ask the county party secretary how a person gets on the list and by what date.

If the seat is filled by appointment, the equivalent is writing to the county chairman, with a copy to the secretary, stating the precinct, your registration details and your willingness to serve, and asking what the process and timeline are. Appointment is the fastest door into the pyramid, and it is the one most people never knock on. Many county chairmen would be delighted to hear from a volunteer in an empty precinct. A word of caution, though. If you came in by appointment, you are in the building, but you are not yet on solid ground, and in most counties you will need to stand for election at the next opportunity to keep the seat.

Keep a copy of everything you submit, with the date and the name of the person who took it. If the office loses your form, you want to be able to prove you were there.

Step 5: Win the seat

If the race is contested, treat it like what it is: a very small election. In a low-turnout primary, a precinct might cast a modest number of Republican ballots. Here is a hypothetical to make the point. Picture a precinct in which 64 Republicans vote in the primary, and two people file for one seat. If you earn 33 of those votes, you win. Thirty-three votes is a church-bulletin mailing, a good block, and a handful of conversations at the fence. You do not need a consultant. You need a list, a door and a reason.

For the list, ask the county election office what voter data you may lawfully obtain and how it can be used, since rules vary by state. For the door, introduce yourself in person to your neighbours who vote in Republican primaries. For the reason, keep your pitch honest and short: "I'm volunteering to represent this precinct in our party, and I'd like your vote."

If the seat is uncontested, you win by filing. That is why vacancies are such an opportunity. The point is not to game anything. The point is that the system trusts ordinary volunteers who show up.

Step 6: Learn what the job actually does

Once you hold the seat, you have a short list of duties, and a long list of things you can choose to do. The short list is usually written in the bylaws, and it usually includes these:

1. Vote for the county chairman and other officers. This is the headline power. Whoever holds the county gavel controls the agenda, the budget, the candidate-recruitment effort and the mailing list. You get a vote on that. If you want to understand why, see how a county party recruits candidates for every empty line on the ballot.
2. Vote on county party business. Resolutions, endorsements where the bylaws permit them, budgets, rule changes. If you are the person who drafts and files resolutions, you are the person who writes the party's local positions, which is the subject of how to write and pass a platform resolution at your county convention.
3. Take part in the path to the state party. In many states committee members help choose delegates to the state convention, or the county chairman sits on the state committee, or committee members vote for state committee representatives. The name and the number differ by state, but the pattern is the ladder described in The Republican Party org chart, from your precinct to the RNC. And since delegates to a national convention often come out of this chain, see also how delegates are chosen and what they really do at a national convention.
4. Represent your neighbours. Many party bylaws expect a committeeman to be the party's face in the precinct: to know who is registered, to help Republicans find their polling place, to hand out sample ballots, to recruit poll workers.

Notice what is not on the list. It does not make you a public official in the sense of a legislator. It does not give you an office, a salary or authority over the government. It gives you a vote, a voice, a place at the table and, if you use them, access and information. In the bylaws it is an unglamorous job. In practice it is the way people end up running things.

Step 7: Show up, and bring friends

The single most useful habit in party politics is attendance. A committee of two hundred and forty that actually meets and actually votes is a different animal from a committee on paper. Be the person who comes to the organizing meeting, reads the agenda in advance, asks what the treasurer's report says and who can see the books, and knows which seat is vacant and who might fill it.

Then recruit. If your precinct has two seats and one is empty, find the person for it. If the one next door is empty, find them too. When you hold your neighbour's hand through the filing process, you create a friend, a vote and a new volunteer. The county party that does this for three cycles in a row is a county party that does not need to apologize to anyone for how it was built. For the longer view of this kind of work, read how supporters can help a minority party between elections, step by step.

The steelman, and the answer

Let me give the other side its best shot, since that is only fair. The best argument against all this is that it is a lot of work for very little reward. You will go to meetings. You will argue about bylaws. You will, on occasion, deal with people whose idea of party building is to guard the keys to the closet. And the committee does not hold the real power: the real power is held by donors, consultants and elected officials.

That is partly true. But look at the sentence in the middle: the committee does not hold the real power, so why do donors, consultants and elected officials care so much about who chairs it? They care because the party has the endorsement process, the mailing list, the convention delegates, the lines on the ballot that need candidates, the platform language, and in many states the machinery for filling vacancies and recruiting poll workers. Those are real. They are decided by committees, and committees are decided by whoever is in the seats. Calling the lowest rung unimportant is a good way to leave it to other people.

Also, "a lot of work" is a matter of choice. The minimum is an hour a month. Many committeemen do the minimum and still cast the votes that elect the chairman. The ones who do more are the ones who end up running the county.

What to avoid

• Do not wait to be asked. Nobody is going to find you. Call the clerk.
• Do not assume your state works like the one next door. It probably does not.
• Do not make your first move a fight. Get in, learn the bylaws, build a relationship with the secretary and the treasurer, and make your case when you know where the votes are.
• Do not trade party seats for personal favours. That is a good way to lose a reputation you spent years building.
• Do not file late. I said it twice on purpose.

The bottom line

• The party is built from the precinct up, and in many counties the bottom seats are open. Filling one is the cheapest way to get a vote on who runs your local party.
• Step one is a phone call: ask your county election office and your county Republican Party what the seat is called in your state, how it is filled and when the window closes.
• Read the bylaws before you file. The quorum, the voting rules and the date of the organizing meeting decide who actually wins.
• File early, keep copies, and meet every residency and registration requirement before the deadline, not after it.
• Once you are in, show up, recruit the neighbour next door, and remember that the point is not the title. The point is that a party run by volunteers belongs to the volunteers who come. See Republicans in Congress for who the party sends to Washington, and then go meet the people who send them.