Re: email ballot proposal

[Jon Bosak <bosak@boethius.eng.sun.com>]

[tallen@sonic.net:]

| (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.)

Unfortunately, that seems to be exactly the point here.  The
relevant passage on p. 415 of RRONR reads as follows:

   It is a fundamental principle of parliamentary law that the
   right to vote is limited to members of an organization who are
   actually present at the time the vote is taken in a legal
   meeting.  Exceptions to this rule must be expressly stated in
   the bylaws.  Such possible exceptions include: (a) voting by
   mail, and (b) proxy voting.

And then the part about mail voting on p. 416 begins:

   A vote by mail, when authorized in the bylaws, is generally
   reserved for important issues...

This says to me that if it's not called out in the bylaws, we
can't vote by mail.  RROR (p. 199) is equally clear:

   Absentee Voting. In a strictly deliberative assembly no member
   can vote who is not present when the question is completely
   put. But in many societies the membership is scattered all over
   a state, or even still wider, and it has been found expedient
   to provide a method of voting that will enable all the members
   to vote upon certain matters, as upon amendments to
   constitutions, by-laws, and in elections of officers. This
   provision, when it is deemed advisable to adopt it, should be
   placed in the constitution or by-laws, as otherwise, unless the
   charter or state laws authorize absentee voting, no member can
   vote except in person. There are two forms of absentee voting --
   by mail, and proxy voting.

   Voting by Mail is used for election of officers, and for
   amendments to the constitution or by-laws, and for such other
   important matters as the society may order to be voted on in
   this way....

Now as a matter of fact, the OASIS bylaws (Art. 13 Sect. 9) do
specify a procedure for mail ballots for votes of the members:

   Section 9. Action By Written Ballot Without A Meeting

   Any action which may be taken at any regular or special meeting
   of members may be taken without a meeting if the corporation
   distributes a written ballot to each member entitled to vote on
   the matter. The ballot shall set forth the proposed action,
   provide a opportunity to specify approval or disapproval of
   each proposal, provided that where the person solicited
   specifies a choice with respect to any such proposal the vote
   shall be cast in accordance therewith, and provide a reasonable
   time within which to return the ballot to the corporation.
   Ballots shall be mailed or delivered in the manner required for
   giving notice of meetings specified in Section 4 (b) of this
   Article.

   All written ballots shall also indicate the number of responses
   needed to meet the quorum requirement and, except for ballots
   soliciting votes for the election of directors, shall state the
   percentage of approvals necessary to pass the measure
   submitted. The ballots must specify the time by which they must
   be received by the corporation in order to be counted.

   Approval of action by written ballot shall be valid only when
   the number of votes cast by ballot within the time period
   specified equals or exceeds the quorum required to be present
   at a meeting authorizing the action, and the number of
   approvals equals or exceeds the number of votes that would be
   required to approve the action at a meeting at which the total
   number of votes cast was the same as the number of votes cast
   by ballot.

   A written ballot may not be revoked after its receipt by the
   corporation or its deposit in the mail, whichever occurs first.

Alas, this does not (I think) apply to advisory committees, and so
does not apply to our current subcommittees of advisory
committees.  So I don't believe that committees can formally vote
by mail until we revise the bylaws.  This is not fatal, since much
of the work can be accomplished through a process of friendly
amendment and straw polls driven by an active and trusted chair,
with ratification by formal votes during meetings; but if we want
TCs ultimately to be able to operate through email most of the
time, this is not what we want for the long-term process.

When we do revise the bylaws, it seems to me that we have two
choices: require that the motion upon which a vote is to be taken
be made during a meeting, with only the vote itself taking place
in email (as in the procedure suggested by Terry), or allow
motions themselves to be made by mail as well as allowing votes on
those motions by mail.  The former alternative is much simpler,
but it prevents some kinds of formal business from getting taken
care of between meetings.  The latter alternative does allow some
kinds of substantive actions to take place entirely through email,
but as a practical matter, some features of the traditional
process -- in particular, formal amendment -- just don't work by
email.

I observe that this is very much like the train of thought that
led to the parliamentary assistant proposal
(http://metalab.unc.edu/bosak/pa/pa.htm).  I still believe that
this is our best hope for a realization of the deliberative
process that works online, but realistically, the implementation
of such a mechanism is a long way off.  Lacking that, my hunch is
that the logistical problems presented by the staging of motions
via email make this option unworkable.

This leads me to roughly the same conclusion as Terry, the
difference being that he thinks the necessary additions to our
procedures can be accomplished by authorization of the board,
whereas my reading suggests that it will require a change to the
bylaws.  If I restate Terry's interim process change as a
long-term change, I get something like this:

   A motion having been stated by the chair in a legal meeting, a
   TC may vote to resolve a question by means of an email ballot.
   In this case, the chair shall post to the TC discussion list a
   call for a vote by email no later than [five business days]
   before the next scheduled meeting, if any, and the period of
   balloting shall last for [five business days], votes being sent
   by email to the TC discussion list.

Here the times in brackets are just placeholders for language that
we will have to agree upon.

Before discussing this further, however, we should decide whether
I'm right in my conclusion that this has to be dealt with through
a change in the bylaws.  If I'm wrong about that, then this is
something we should work out now in order to convey a
recommendation to the board; if not, then this is probably a
feature of the long-term process that should be assigned its
proper place in the issues list and considered when we get there.

Jon