[governance] Preparing for the vote on charter amendment proposals (was Re: Coordinator election results)

[Norbert Bollow]

[IGC Coordinator hat on]

On the timeline for bringing the charter amendment proposals to a vote:

Let's allow ourselves five more days, until the evening of January 27,
to see if some of the currently informal proposals (see [1]) will get
formally proposed by at least ten Caucus members.
[1] http://igcaucus.org/informally-discussed-charter-amendments

Let's then have a formal discussion period of again five days before
the actual voting starts. (As was pointed out not long ago by Parminder,
it is good democratic practice to always schedule a discussion period
before important decisions are made.)

This will be followed by a ten days voting period.


The remainder of this posting discusses the question (on which there
have been differences of opinion) of how precisely the exact list of IGC
members who will be invited to vote on the charter amendments is to be
determined.

Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:

> I have updated the permanent record of the election on the IGC website
> accordingly
> (http://igcaucus.org/2012-2014-co-ordinator-election-results).  Thanks
> to Norbert for helping to find the discrepancy.  There is no change to
> the figures of those who voted for Norbert and Imran, and therefore
> the election result doesn't change.
> 
> As to whether those who voted informally are to be counted as voting
> members this year, Norbert and Sala have made a decision on this and
> will be announcing it on the list shortly, if they haven't done so
> already.

Many thanks to Jeremy for double-checking so that we can now feel
assured that we have reliable data allowing to compile the "IGC members
who are entitled to vote on amendments to the Charter" list.

Our charter specifies that "In amending the charter, everyone who
voted in the previous election will be deemed a member for amending the
charter."

In the view of the IGC coordinators, there is some ambiguity here on
whether persons who have self-identified as a Caucus member and then
bailed out before actually casting a vote for a specific candidate
should be considered as "having voted" for the purpose of that
provision. Evidence for the presence of ambiguity in this provision can
be found in the well-documented long-standing disagreements on what the
appropriate interpretation of this provision is.

For the purposes of the upcoming vote on charter amendment proposals,
we resolve this ambiguity by considering those who bailed out after
self-identifying as a charter member to have effectively voted
"abstain", and therefore as "having voted" for the purpose of that
provision. The reasons for this are that (1) it appears appropriate to
rather err on the side of greater inclusiveness in case of doubt, and
(2) during the actual voting period this advice was given: "So that's
the option that you have if you want to affirm your membership but don't
want to vote.  Begin answering, then bail out (without choosing the
option to clear your answers) before casting your vote." (That in
itself isn't absolutely decisive, since according to the charter IGC
membership doesn't imply being "deemed a member for amending the
charter", but there's at least sufficient room for misunderstanding
here that it wouldn't be fair to now exclude people from voting on the
charter amendments who may have followed that suggestion specifically
with the goal of being able to participate in the charter amendment
process.)

The resulting list of "IGC members who are entitled to vote on
amendments to the Charter", compiled according to this inclusive
interpretation of "having voted", has been kindly made available by
Jeremy on

http://igcaucus.org/list-members

Using this list, I have verified that both of Avri's amendment
proposals (see [2]) (these are the only ones that have been formally
proposed so far) have a sufficient number of co-proposers.
[2] http://igcaucus.org/formally-proposed-charter-amendments

Greetings,
Norbert



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