email ballot proposal

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Email Ballot 17 April 00 Terry Allen

The PAC discussed having a standing rule for email ballots.
We can't.  According to R, p 17 (using the current version, which
is the only normative text), standing rules relate to "the details
of the administration of a society rather than to parliamentary
procedure."

What we want would seem to be a special rule of order (p 15), but it
is not obvious that these can be adopted by committees rather than
societies (yes, I know that the committee is the society writ small,
but I think that principle may not apply here).  And in fact it
would be confusing if different committees were to have different
rules for email balloting.

Let's go back to the case that provoked the discussion in the
first place.  Jon made a motion in email and called for a vote.
Those are two distinct parliamentary acts.  By contrast, what the
Docbook TC did was to vote to allow the chairman to call an email
ballot on a specific issue at his discretion (that is, to allow Norm
to ask for a ballot on approving Docbook 4.0 when it was ready).
The difference is that the Docbook TC framed the motion to be
balloted while assembled in a meeting; Jon brought up a motion that
hadn't been so framed.

Now what the Docbook TC did may not be quite proper, inasmuch as no
one actually made the motion while in a meeting, but we could have
done so.  (R, p 415, says that exceptions to the rule that members
may vote only when present in a meeting should be expressly stated
in the bylaws, but I think we can ignore that as tangential to the
main point here.)  The section of R on mail ballots (pp 416-18)
is unhelpful and leaves open several points:

 - can other business be transacted during a mail ballot?  (The
	section on balloting in a meeting indicates yes.)

 - can several motions be open for balloting at the same time?
	(Normally you wouldn't want them to be, because the vote
	on one could affect the vote on another, but it's commonly
	done for example in corporate proxy voting.)

 - can a committee decide the rules for its mail ballot?  (I think
	not, on the same ground as I gave above, that committee
	rules should be consistent across committees.)

On consideration, I think the purist view, hewing to R, is that we
can't have email ballots until the Board authorizes them.  And I
continue to wonder whether R is the right basis for working through
email at all.  Certainly the question of making motions while not in
meetings is not going to be resolvable by reference to R.

But supposing we want to ask the Board to authorize email ballots,
here's what I'd propose.

An advisory committee(1) may vote(2) to conduct an email ballot(3)
on a motion made during a meeting.  The chair of the committee
shall, at his discretion, call for such a ballot no later than two
weeks before the next scheduled meeting, if any(4), and the period
of balloting shall last for two weeks(5).  Votes shall be sent by
email to the email discussion list(6).

Exegesis:

1.  Does not apply to other committees mentioned in the Bylaws.

2.  Voting requires that a motion be made, so someone has to move
	to have a vote by email ballot during a meeting.  What Jon
	did is just not allowed (we fixed it in our most recent
	meeting, but it was illegitimate).

3.  Assumes that email ballots are like mail ballots as described
	in R, except that they're not secret (and as R deals mostly
	with physical security of secret ballots, regarding
	balloting mostly as a means of obtaining secrecy, there's 
	not much else left that R describes about them).  See 6.

4.  In order to allow the full period of time for voting (see 5),
	the ballot shouldn't be called if that time would extend
	beyond the beginning of the next meeting.  If there's no
	scheduled meeting no restriction can be established.

5.  Two weeks is my suggestion; if we want to design a process for
	rapid progress through email voting we'd have to shorten
	the period (and maybe should provide separately for 
	"fast-track" voting if the committee agrees to it).  As I've
	said, I think it's essential to know when the committee is
	*not* meeting, and similarly, I want to know that I have a
	certain amount of slack so I can concentrate on other
	things.  So two weeks sounds about right to me.  I'm sure
	someone else will have another suggestion.

6.  We're thinking of email balloting as a replacement for voting by
	methods that would not be secret in a meeting, so votes
	should go to the list, I think.  An alternative would be to
	send them to the secretary (etymological digression on 
	"secretary" omitted, but it's an interesting context for
	one).




regards, Terry