[governance] Procedural rules for amendment of the charter

[Norbert Bollow]

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 16:37:40 +0000 (UTC)
Imran Ahmed Shah" <ias_pk at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  Hi, Bruna.This reminds to congratulate on uncontested, but it leaves
> here a big question about eligible voters for the charter amendment
> approval. Charter refer to the last election. ...If no election was
> held, ... is there no one eligible?..... Or all are eligible?.... or
> previous election will be assumed as last election??

Under the procedural rules of the current version of the Charter, a
proposal to amend the Charter must be "proposed by no fewer than ten
(10) members", and it succeeds only if the change proposal is "approved
by no less than two-thirds (2/3) of the members of the IGC"; that is
clarified as follows: "In amending the charter, everyone who voted in
the previous election will be deemed a member for amending the charter."

In view of these hurdles, the only reasonable interpretation is to
understand the term "the previous election" as referring to the last
election where actual voting has taken place.

But practically speaking, I would suggest that it makes little sense to
initiate a charter amendment process unless there was an election (with
actual voting) recently. Otherwise the likelihood is too great that more
than a third of the people who voted in the last election are not
currently actively following the list, and then the proposal will fail
for lack of receiving enough positive votes, no matter how strong a
consensus there might otherwise be in support of the proposal.

I would further suggest that it would be wise to have an appeals team in
place, as foreseen in the IGC Charter, before any attempt is made to
revise the Charter. Otherwise there is no legitimate way of resolving
any disagreements in regard to whether a proposal to amend the Charter
was successful. That could be bad. Right now we at least know what the
IGC Charter is.

Greetings,
Norbert