Changes To Election Process

[bradleysigma]

This amendment would solve some issues with the current election process, and create exciting new ones.

From my experience as returning officer over the last few years, the current election process has some issues, which this amendment is designed to solve. The main issue is that the entire election process happens at the AGM, with anything decided beforehand being subject to change, and thus making it very difficult to prepare for the election. Specific examples:

• The minor officers and general member positions are created at the AGM. This means that it's a weird grey area for nominating for those positions, since they don't really exist. Arguable any nomination for them submitted before the AGM is invalid.
• The current process relies on the current committee acting in good faith. A malicious committee could delete any nomination from the nomination form that they didn't like, including competing nominations if they are running for reelection.
• Printing out ballots ahead of time is precarious if the minor officers haven't been decided yet. Additionally, the ballots will either need to be printed by the committee, which is bad electoral practice (a malicious committee could stuff the ballot box with extra ballots), or by somebody who is expected to be the returning officer, but might not be.

My solution to this is to have an Electoral General Meeting one to four months before the AGM, to appoint the returning officer and to create the minor officer and general committee positions. The returning officer will then handle the nominations and ballot printing without the uncertainty in the current system.

The main downside to this is that it creates a whole new general meeting every year. Nobody likes general meetings; that's why members regularly try to liven them up with motions regarding the Committee Jigs. However, given the short agenda for the EGM, it should be doable in half an hour or so, and may be tacked on to the start or end of another event.

I feel like this is a lose-lose situation; both the current system and the proposed system have downsides. Nevertheless, I feel that this is an improvement, but I won't die on this hill.

[JamesDearlove]

Honestly, I think the overhead of having to run another general meeting is not worth it. Any past and present committee member can agree that 1 general meeting a year is ideal, and in years of SGMs being held organising that second meeting can be a headache to organise. Additionally an Electoral General Meeting seems to further complicate the already arguably complicated system here, we should be reducing complexity within our elections not introducing more.

In relation to your points, a couple of counterarguments:

• Point 2: This is already solved by the fact that nominations at AGM are accepted from the floor. If in the case of a malicious committee member removing nominations, or in the much more common occurrence of a lost nomination, a member can be nominated from the floor.
• Point 3: There is no formal requirement to have a ballots with titles on them, they can be blank ballots for voting making this a non-issue.

My alternative proposed solution is to instead formalise the Officers into the constitution so that there is no more requirement to create and dissolve them. This now means that we know which officers there will be elections for, and if committee so decides that a new officer should be created in the following year, a proposal can be raised.

[bradleysigma]

re: blank ballots, the ballots must absolutely have titles on them, for the integrity of any disputes following the election. Given that members often apply for multiple positions, it can impossible to determine which role a ballot was cast for after the AGM. Ties and runoff elections complicates things even more.

[JamesDearlove]

I should clarify in that my meaning of "blank ballot", I mean one with a title that the voter needs to fill in.

[LimaoC]

Motion tabled @ 05/10/2023 AGM

[jenseni-git]

Motion passed by 2/3 majority @ 07/03/2024 SGM.

@bradleysigma please resolve the conflicts and then I shall merge this PR.

[jenseni-git]

Correction. I have word that this may have been tabled and not passed. I shall bring this up at the AGM