BCA AGM/Party Weekend

[alastairgott]

hardly an indicator of massive support.

I guess it's difficult to reconcile the desire for speed of change vs the desire for ease of change.

clearly people physically at the meeting may want to reword their proposals or Remove an option from Voting.

having proxy voting will slow down the speed of change due to it having to be decided months in advance and then subsequently discussed to ensure that a matter is written in plain English and doesn't contradict with anything else written elsewhere.

Some of the Items passed will greatly help the speed of Change, which was quite clearly asked for on this forum, in the meeting and around and about.

I heard some young'uns discussing a facebook (FB) style instant voting process, but they were also having a laugh about "reacting" (FB Term) to some of the items in the meeting.

How the speed of Change and the Ease of Change are reconciled (or Not) is down to those who want to propose a change. which I believe can be done by anyone who's a member of BCA.

Proxy Voting will not work unless there is an instant link between the meeting and the voters.
Hypothetical Situation:
a vote is proposed that there should be perks for being members of the BCA:
Option 1) a free bbq with 10 different meats always held in Cornwall
Option 2) a free Bar annually at a location decided by Joe Bloggs most probably held at his local caving club somewhere up north.

Option 2 gains most support from the caving community, but is subsequently dropped at the meeting, due to cost of Providing a free bar.
Option 1 now has a majority of Votes over the against or abstain votes.

Option 1 is now passed. vegetable eaters are upset, northerners are upset and the result is turmoil over some food.

as Jenny said and MCH says, proxy voting does not work. unless you can think of a suitable proposal to make it work.

 

[Badlad]

I agree that the proxy vote motion before the AGM was not well constructed.  I also understand the fears expressed as to how proxy votes can be used to dominate a vote.  However, I know several people who would have liked to cast their vote at the weekend but couldn't travel to Castleton for various reasons.  The end result is that BCA members can be excluded from the decision making process and as a result the engagement is low.  The BCA voting system is not all bad but it would certainly benefit from modernisation and a new approach.  There are so many more ways of doing things in the modern IT world and adopting some of these may help to get more people involved. The removal of the requirement for postal voting is a big step forward and will hopefully pass through the final process.

Next I hope we can undertake a long term review of the entire constitution to better reflect modern caving and improve engagement.  I suggested this at the AGM and I will look to get this enacted through the next year.  I was very pleased to be approached by a number of young cavers afterwards offering to sit on a working group.  If it was up to me I'd take them up on this offer asap.

Cheers

 

[robinw]

I heard some young'uns discussing a facebook (FB) style instant voting process

Who knows - we may get there one day. The voting proposal was carefully drafted to allow methods I've never heard of and may not yet have been invented to be used in the future.

That's by the way as I'm really here to thank all of those who worked so hard to make it a great weekend. Henry, Martyn & the kitchen team;  Les, Wendy & team at the bar; Paul & John the so informative BCRA guys. Rostram who ran the sing along and 99 Flake the house party combined with the jousters to make it a memorable Saturday evening. Many, many thanks to you all

 

[badger]

I heard some young'uns discussing a facebook (FB) style instant voting process

Who knows - we may get there one day. The voting proposal was carefully drafted to allow methods I've never heard of and may not yet have been invented to be used in the future.

That's by the way as I'm really here to thank all of those who worked so hard to make it a great weekend. Henry, Martyn & the kitchen team;  Les, Wendy & team at the bar; Paul & John the so informative BCRA guys. Rostram who ran the sing along and 99 Flake the house party combined with the jousters to make it a memorable Saturday evening. Many, many thanks to you all

 

[andrewmcleod]

Proxy Voting will not work unless there is an instant link between the meeting and the voters.

Except that the House of Groups already uses proxy voting. There is no requirement that a group nominee is a member of that group. There is no way a group can make decisions about amended motions unless the entire committee is present and have time to discuss it, which obviously they don't.

Really it shouldn't be a problem because motions submitted to AGMs have to be submitted months in advance and there really shouldn't be amendments or motions being dropped etc at the last minute. There were actually three proxy voting proposals (none by me this time), two of which were dropped before the meeting began!

An AGM isn't really the place to be sorting out the details of motions - they should already be considered carefully, argued and publicised before they get to the AGM stage. Many other organisations manage to have proxy voting without issues but some organisations I think don't let you have binding resolutions on things at an AGM unless they were on the printed agenda.

It might be a good idea to require a number of signatures (maybe 10 or 20) before a motion is accepted for an AGM. At least then there are more eyes checking it for issues. You could also make it so there would be a council meeting before the AGM where all proposed motions were discussed and the council could work with the proposers to simplify the proposals or perhaps combine very similar proposals.

 

[AR]

Next I hope we can undertake a long term review of the entire constitution to better reflect modern caving and improve engagement.  I suggested this at the AGM and I will look to get this enacted through the next year.  I was very pleased to be approached by a number of young cavers afterwards offering to sit on a working group.  If it was up to me I'd take them up on this offer asap.

I came away from the meeting feeling that BCA needs its constitution stripping down and rebuilding; in particular the interplay between individuals, clubs, regional councils , and the national body. While I was sat at the back of the meeting  I was thinking "what purpose does this two-house system actually serve in the 21st century?".

I'd also suggest looking at the administrative workload and seeing how it could be better divided so as not to overload particular officers, and also deputisation given Andy Eavis' comments about being out of the country half the year - if this is the case then BCA needs a deputy chairman (speaking as a deputy chairman who had to stand in for an infirm chairman last year!).

I'm well aware of the problem that too many people filling BCA roles are only doing them because no-one else will, but this is common to many organisations these days and there's no easy answer to this. Having said that, Mark and Will deserve everyone's thanks for volunteering to take on the individual caver rep places on BCA council!

 

[Jenny P]

Re. andrewmc's point:

"It might be a good idea to require a number of signatures (maybe 10 or 20) before a motion is accepted for an AGM. At least then there are more eyes checking it for issues. You could also make it so there would be a council meeting before the AGM where all proposed motions were discussed and the council could work with the proposers to simplify the proposals or perhaps combine very similar proposals."

There was an attempt at the March BCA Council meeting to simplify the motions proposed and combine them but it didn't work very well so we still ended up with multiple proposals on the same subject.  There was some tidying up at the AGM itself and, given the complications of the various proposals, it did work out OK in the end.

I think there is something to be said for the idea of requiring a number of signatures before a motion is accepted for the AGM.  It wouldn't stop someone coming up with something new and revolutionary but they would have to be sure that they had some backers before putting it forward formally.

There is also a commitment to taking a look at the whole constitution and voting system to see if it could be modernised and made more relevant.  I'm sure this is possible in the age of modern communications.

Although the "2 house" system may be seen as somewhat strange and cumbersome, perhaps it's worth remembering that there are many Access Controlling Bodies (clubs, regional councils and management committees) which do good work on behalf of cavers and landowners in situations where CRoW access arrangements would not apply.  It's only reasonable that these groups should be able to have a say on behalf of their members and those they work for.  One would hope that the views of individual members and "groups" would not be in conflict but they sometimes are so this is a safeguard for both elements.

 

[MarkS]

I think andrewmc has absolutely hit the nail on the head with the comments above.

Proxy voting is currently excluded entirely in the house of individuals, yet used almost exclusively in the house of groups. Personally, I would say that being unable to amend proposals at an AGM is a small price to pay for letting all members vote on an issue. Or put another way, excluding a significant number (majority?) of members from a vote in order for the people attending to be able to modify proposals seems...questionable.

I certainly would have voted for proxy voting at the AGM, but unavoidably I couldn't be there...  I wonder how many people were in a similar position.

 

[Jenny P]

I think maybe part of the problem was that there didn't seem to be a suitable way of organising proxy voting which didn't risk a proxy vote swamping completely the views of those who turned up in person to debate a motion.

There was more than one proposal re. proxy voting and they outlined different ways of organising it so no-one was quite sure how it could operate.  It's also worth pointing out that the BCA Chairman had reported what he felt was misuse of proxy voting at the International Union of Speleology.  DCA had also, at one time, had a version of proxy voting which was misused to the extent that their Constitution was changed to avoid the problem happening in the future.

If you can come up with a proposal for a bomb-proof version of proxy voting which avoids the potential for misuse, then I think it would be worth reconsidering in the future.  In the meantime, don't forget that everyone will be able to have a say in the ballot which will take place shortly to ratify the AGM decisions.  This will ensure that nothing can be passed finally which the majority of cavers will object to.  However, it is fair to say that this system also means that something you wanted which did NOT get passed at the AGM will not then come up in the ballot.  But you can always try again at a future AGM and make a better case the second time around.

 

[MarkS]

I think proxy voting could only really work if, as suggested above, proposals were not able to be amended at the meeting they are voted on. That way a motion can't be both amended and passed by an individual holding a large number of votes at one meeting. I assume this is what is meant by misuse of proxy voting?

Off the top of my head, one suggestion could be that if the proposed motions are emailed to the membership, votes could be given by simply replying to that email. Using that method, no individual could hold too much influence at a meeting. It would also avoid potential flaws in other online voting systems, which I think was discussed elsewhere on this forum. Someone wanting to abuse the system would have to hack other peoples' email accounts, which would seem unlikely.

 

[Ian Ball]

Or you could limit the number of proxy votes held?

 

[andrewmcleod]

Or you could limit the number of proxy votes held?

The proposal limited this to 2 proxy votes per person.

To be honest proxy voting is missing the point a bit. I know it wouldn't have been possible with this year's proposal because they broke it so it wouldn't be possible (because I think they were worried that the chair might abuse their power?) but the aim last year wasn't proxy voting - it was postal voting. Proxy voting, nominating the Chair as your proxy (and indicating your preferences, of course) is just a common way to achieve this. I would be equally happy with a system of direct postal voting on motions and no proxy voting. If you do it right, you also don't need to hold a postal ballot for constitutional motions since they would have been already voted on by the membership at the AGM by post, having been published in the agenda in advance...  I think you almost want a pre-AGM meeting (or better still a set of meetings, possibly hosted by each regional body and feeding up to national council) to bicker and argue about what the motions will/should be, and then an AGM where there is almost no debate and no amendments - just voting. Possibly the BCA is still a bit small for this kind of organization though (just large enough to make AGMs etc. a big unrepresentative pain).

(insert 'email/electronic/telepathic ballot' for 'postal ballot' above as appropriate!)

IMO any motion passed at an AGM which deviates significantly from the published agenda is likely to be ill-considered.

 

[andrewmcleod]

Incidentally the fact that people were/are talking about people turning up with tens of votes when the proxy voting proposal limited it to just 2 means that people clearly didn't always know exactly what they were voting for. There were definitely points when people had to say 'sorry, could you read out the amended motion' or whatever just so people had some idea what they were actually voting for! Not a criticism of the people involved who did their best to navigate the constitutional minefield but of the process...

It was pretty confusing most of the time given that the motions actually being voted on only bore a limited resemblance to the motions in the documents provided at the meeting let alone the motions submitted by the deadline...