(Mike Chamberlain/Cranky Hermit) – All dressed up and nowhere to go. Well, I had somewhere to go. It just wasn’t where I thought it was, where I was. And I didn’t know where it was nor how to find it. I tried calling the phone number I had but wasn’t able to reach anyone.
I intended to visit a particular one of the Republican clubs in town but I was obviously in the wrong place. There was no one but myself to blame, however, because I’d made the colossal mistake of getting the meeting information from the Clark County Republican Party website.
The CCRP tracks the meetings of the various Republican-themed groups in the area. They’ve got a fancy new website, with plenty of bells and whistles. The problem is, the information is often outdated and rarely corrected, something I know from personal experience.
See, I’m the President of the Republican Toastmasters in Las Vegas. The information on our club hasn’t been updated in years. The President shown on the CCRP site hasn’t served in that role for 2 years. Several months ago we were forced to change our meeting location – another change not reflected on the CCRP website.
I have spoken to multiple people on multiple occasions about correcting this information. No updates have been made. A member of our club serves on the CCRP Executive Board. He has attempted to get it corrected. No updates have been made. I recently gave a speech about the club at a meeting of the party’s central committee. No updates have been made.
Our former President has received a number of calls from people who have shown up at the time and place indicated on the CCRP website only to discover we weren’t there. I can imagine that is what happened with this club. They likely changed their meeting time and/or location – chances are the person whose contact information I had isn’t even involved with the club anymore – but their information hasn’t been updated on the CCRP website. If their experience is anything like ours, it is not from lack of trying.
Political parties survive by using the time and talents of people who want to get involved – volunteers who do it because they believe in the cause, not because they expect anything in return. But those people also have other things to do with their time. If they feel their time is being wasted, they won’t complain, they just won’t come back. And they’ll discourage their friends from ever getting involved in the first place.
This is not intended to single out any person or the current leaders of the CCRP. From my own experience and that of others I’ve talked to, the current incarnation of the organization is no worse than its predecessors in this regard, and may actually be better. But I just want my club’s information corrected and for me and others to be able to avoid wandering around, all dressed up with no place to go.
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