Re: email ballot proposal

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Jon wrote:
| [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.

Etc.  Drat.  You're right.  
...

| 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

But as Jon points out, this relates to meetings of members, not
of committees.
...

| 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.

Agreed.

| 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.

(Eduardo, this is your cue to deny that a week has seven days ...)

| 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.

You've convinced me.  I would change your language to delete the
requirement that the motion must be made by the chair.

[Wrt to the parliamentary assistant, it would be possible to
contrive software that could keep the ballots secret (or more
mundanely, to outsource the counting of them).  I marvel that
the use of double envelopes wasn't known in 1915.]

regards, Terry