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Welcome to the Non-Partisan Delaware Website

Welcome to the Non-Partisan Delaware Website!

Non-Partisan Delaware is a ballot qualified political organization in Delaware. We are unique from many political organizations in that we do not have a fixed platform or policy goal. Our immediate short term goals are determined each election cycle by the NPD Governing Board through the development of an internal "Strategic Plan" and we focus on achieving those goals through public information activities, lobbying policymakers in coordination with our coalition partners, and supporting candidates for public office.

Our Strategic Plan for the 2023-2024 Election Cycle includes the following priorities:

  • Cannabis Legalization

    NPD is extremely proud that in our first year of operations, we were able to assist the Delaware Cannabis Advocacy Network and the Delaware Chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws to pass HB1 and HB2, legalizing personal use quantities of cannabis and creating a legal retail market.

  • Ranked Choice Voting

    NPD is coordinating with Rank the Vote Delaware to promote the study and implementation of ranked choice voting in Delaware elections.

  • Abortion, Gender & Sexual Minority, and Gun Rights

    While these issues are rarely considered together and often find little common ground between the traditional "right" and "left", NPD views all of these issues through the perspective of individual privacy and the rights of individuals to live as they choose.

  • Education, Land Use, Environment, Broadband, Criminal Justice, Other

    This catch-all refers to areas we would like to work on as opportunities arise, but have not put together a more focused and cohesive approach.

On these issues and any others, Non-Partisan Delaware hopes to provide a perspective outside the common left-vs-right paradigm based on thoughtful and thorough analysis, open but skeptical towards new information, and unconstrained by ideological dogma.

Our Board members, after years of activism, have developed a healthy skepticism of coercive, majority-imposed policies over those based on mutual consent and individual dignity. However we recognize the need for pragmatism as we seek to find ways a new and small organization on the Delaware political scene can make a positive difference!

Keep scrolling for News and Updates, or follow the links on the side bar to the right (below the newsfeed on mobile) to connect to our social media communities and get involved. We hold monthly Meet Ups in all three counties and someone is usually active on our Discord Server in between.

Join us today!


About Us:

Non-Partisan Delaware Founded!

Latest News:

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Legalization Passes the General Assembly

A major goal of NPD in the 2022 election was to provide an alternative to candidates who had opposed the legalization of cannabis in the 2020-2022 session of the General Assembly, when legalization bills passed in both chambers but failed to muster sufficient votes to override Governor John Carney's veto.


In support of DCAN's long time effort to end cannabis prohibition, we have once again gotten legalization bills through the Delaware General Assembly and they are now once again on John Carney's desk awaiting his decision in the face of over 70% public support.  This time though, the votes that sent the bills to his desk will be enough to override him if he vetoes them, which will make him the first Delaware governor in the 21st century to have a veto overridden.

He doesn't have to do it though.  Under the Delaware Constitution, unless the General Assembly adjourns, a bill that is not explicitly vetoed becomes law in 10 days (excluding Sundays, of course) unless it is signed sooner.  So these bills will become law by Carney's inaction.

We didn't get his inaction last year though.  Last year, the bills passed on smaller margins and he vetoed them, and there were not enough votes to override him.  This year there was, so our hope is that even if he maintains his stubborn unwillingness to sign them, that he will not want to veto them and take an ignominious place in history.

We are not powerless in this interval.  The legislators that opposed these bills did so based on flimsy arguments using cherry-picked and fabricated data.  The weakness of these arguments must continue to be exposed and we must continue to pressure the governor and members of the General Assembly to let these bills become law.  Carney is far less likely to try a veto if he is assured his veto will be overridden.

The arguments are largely as tired and unoriginal as they were for prohibition when it was first implemented.  The Gateway Theory continues to be trotted out as if the percentage of hard drug users that used cannabis first has any more bearing on how likely cannabis users are to begin using hard drugs than the number of hard drug users who drank water first or who breathed oxygen first.  The logical trap is clearly an easy one to fall into, but that all squares are rectangles does not make all rectangles squares.

Several of the so-called "studies" trotted out by opponents to claim that cannabis use is linked to everything from increases in fatal traffic accidents to child abuse to schizophrenia and violence engage in correlational fallacies that attribute the presence of cannabis in a situation as the cause of that situation without any empirical basis for doing so.

Others also demonstrate the danger of relying on citations of "scientific studies" without taking the peer review process into account or actually considering the methodologies of these studies.  Of particular note are studies related to motor vehicle accidents "related" to cannabis.  Not only do many of these studies conflate testing positive for THC metabolites with impairment when metabolites can be detected for several weeks after any impairment has faded, but they deliberately ignore positive tests for more immediately impairing drugs like alcohol and prescription drugs as well as a shift in methodologies for compiling these statistics where cannabis was not routinely tested for prior to legalization, but after legalization it was, leading to an increase in the detection rate that is not reflective of an increase in the number of impaired or even metabolite-positive drivers.

All this aside from the even more obviously nonsensical claims like the one from Senator Bryant Richardson that 50% of males who use cannabis become violent or Senator Dave Lawson insisting that legal cannabis use is "just wrong" and it is the job of Delaware politicians to be "the adults" and tell us no when we demand the freedom to exercise our rights in peace.

Contact John Carney:
(302) 744-4101
https://bit.ly/GovCarney

Contact your legislators:
https://bit.ly/YesonHB1and2

Don't let up on them until HB1 and HB2 become law!

Thursday, March 23, 2023

2023 School Board Elections!



School Board elections are coming up!

You can see a list of all of the filed candidates here.

Brandywine, Capital, Colonial, Lake Forest, and Woodbridge districts do not have elections as only one candidate filed in any of their respective nominating districts.  Milford and Indian River are having elections, but only the at-large Milford seat and the District 2 Indian River seat are contested.  Milford A & B as well as Indian River District 3 were up this year, but only had one candidate file.

After consultations among the Governing Board, membership, and other stakeholders, the following email was sent out to all of the school board candidates across the state on March 31:

Hello!

We know you probably receive a lot of emails, so we will try to be brief.  Thank you!  We have no small appreciation for the courage and effort it takes to run for public office, so thank you for stepping up and offering to serve your community.

School board races are crucial to the educational policy of our state, and Non-Partisan Delaware wants to help promote the elections themselves to boost turnout, as well as provide information about candidates and their views on issues identified by our Governing Board, membership, and other stakeholders to help voters make informed decisions on election day.  We would appreciate your prompt response to our brief survey, which we will post unedited on our website and distribute through our social media channels prior to May 9th.  Please feel free to respond in line below or email any other response to SB2023@NonPartisanDE.org.

Thank you!

The following reminder was sent as a reply to the initial email on May 3:

Good Morning!  With less than a week before the election, you may have missed our initial email in the flood of surveys we know you've received since filing, but there's still time to get your responses in and published before election day!  We have received responses from some candidates, but not their opponents!  Check if your opponent has replied here and don't let your lack of response make the difference on Tuesday.  Get a small leg up on the competition in a low turn out race by responding first if they haven't.  Don't miss the opportunity to have an unbiased, non-partisan interview with responses from across the political spectrum conducted and published by Delaware's newest ballot qualified political organization!

Please feel free to reply in line to the questions in the original email, or send your responses separately to SB2023@NonPartisanDE.org.

Thank you!

Will McVay
2023 School Board Election Coordinator

Non-Partisan Delaware 

The following survey questions were attached to the initial email:

  1. Why are you running for School Board?



  1. What personal connections do you have to your local school district and community?



  1. How should district policy balance student privacy against parental rights?



  1. What should be the district’s approach to overseeing curriculum, reading material, and lesson planning in the classrooms?



  1. How well do you feel that your district currently serves students who are gifted, learning disabled, or who have other special needs? What policies does your district follow that should be improved, or adopted more widely?


Check back on this page before the election for responses as they come in, and don't forget to vote at your local polling place on May 9th!


Appoquinimink

Tashiba A. Graham - no response
Timothy W. Johns - no response
Madeline L. Locke - no response
Raymond Joseph Petkevis - no response

Caesar Rodney

Tawanna Prophet Brinkley - no response
Nicole Hill - no response
Emily Phelan - no response

Cape Henlopen - Nominating District A

Shawn L. Lovenguth - no response
Jessica A. Tyndall - no response

Christina - Nominating District C

Christine A. Gilbert - published
Douglas Danger Manley - published

Christina - Nominating District E

Y.F. Lou - published
Yong Peng - no response

Delmar

Shane Bowden - no response
Dawn M. Turner - no response

Indian River - District 2

Michael R. Bellerose - no response
Leo J. Darmstadter III - published
Ivan D. Neal - no response

Laurel

Ivy Bonk - no response
Sabrina Isler - no response

Milford

Ashlee Connell - no response
Danielle Deinert - published

Red Clay - Nominating District A

Aje English-Wynn - no response
Jing Han - withdrawn
John Shulli - no response

Red Clay - Nominating District D

Carlucci Coelho - published
Jose Matthews - published

Seaford

Armore Rice - no email available, survey sent via FB messenger, no response
Stephanie Smith - published
David Tull - no response

Smyrna

Marie Fontaine St Pierre - no response
Bobbi Jo Webber - no response