BCA Ballot Results

BCA Chair

Member
BCA BALLOT RESULT

wl

We can announce the results of the ballot which closed at 23:59pm on Friday 13th December.

The constitutional changes around which this ballot was based were put forward at the 2019 AGM and passed in both houses at the meeting, hence their progression to a ballot of all members. All constitutional changes require 70% support in both the House of Individuals and the House of Groups in order to be implemented.

The changes were intended to remove the two-house voting system at General Meetings, leaving voting by individual members (CIMs and DIMs) only. They would also create a requirement for online voting to be made available, whereby all motions that achieve a defined level of support at the AGM itself (not just constitutional matters), as well as contested elections, are put to an online vote of all individual members for a roughly one-month period after the AGM.

The ballot was conducted using an electronic system developed specifically for this ballot. Access to vote was controlled via a unique ballot ID assigned and sent to all members.

All members for who we had email addresses were emailed ballot details and a ballot ID on 8th November. For all the members we did not have email addresses for, as well as those for who we received an email bounce-back notification, a postal letter was sent in the week commencing 11th November, including a ballot slip for anyone wanting to vote by return postage.

The results are as follows:

House of Individuals:
Votes to support the motion: 854 (82.5%)
Votes to reject the motion: 181 (17.5%)
Turnout: 1035 of 6285 (16.5%)

House of Groups:
Votes to support the motion: 66 (76.7%)
Votes to reject the motion: 20 (23.3%)
Turnout: 86 of 185 (46.5%)

Result:
Both houses exceed the 70% support requirement, and so the motion has passed.

Statistics on postal returns:
The total number of postal returns was only 56 (5% of the total ballot turnout), meaning 95% of voters chose to use the online system to cast their vote. Of those 5% who returned their ballot by post, 66% voted to support the motion.

Five postal ballot papers were rejected; one due to no ballot ID having been entered by the voter, two due to the ballot IDs being entered illegibly or incorrectly (considerable effort was made to try to decipher these), and two that arrived on Saturday 14th December, thus after the deadline.

Thank you to everyone who has worked very hard to make this ballot happen.
 

Badlad

Administrator
Staff member
Excellent result.  A cheerful prospect going forward compared to last weeks ballot.  Well done to all involved I am sure it required a lot of volunteer effort. 

It must be clear that the levels of both group and individual support for this vote indicate support for the modernising agenda.  Well lets hope so.
 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
Excellent, well done to all involved.

So good to see the BCA modernising and improving, thanks for the support cavers  ;) (y)
 

JasonC

Well-known member
Agreed that it's a positive result.

But, it's a pity that the turnout was so low, more responses would have made the mandate for change clearer.  Still, no-one can say they weren't given every opportunity to vote, I don't think the BCA could have done more to publicise the ballot.

Of the 83.5% of individuals who didn't vote, I wonder what proportion got the invitation by email (and thus have no excuse that it was too difficult) ?
 

Madness

New member
It is a shame that so many couldn't be bothered to vote. It does seem to back up the suggestion that the majority only see the BCA as a source of third party insurance and as long as they keep getting that they're not bothered what else the BCA do.

Thank you to everyone involved in organising the vote.

 

pwhole

Well-known member
It's a rubbish turnout for something so easy and so important, and does make the result somewhat ambiguous. But rules are rules I guess, so the result stands. It would be a shame if the insurance were the only reason for membership.
 

menacer

Active member
Awesome result.

Congratulations to all involved, this was not an easy task and I'm so pleased the effort paid off.

I love democracy.

May I be the first to suggest that:-
 
"The ballot was rigged"
"People didn't know what they were voting for"
"Russian interference won the election"
"Only racists and thick people voted"
"People were swayed by far right Facebook memes"

Just want to get this in before the losing side do...
.... And I'm feeling troll-like this evening.

Do you think the old cavers will be saying the youth vote stole their future?

:tease: :ras:




 

Badlad

Administrator
Staff member
I expect that for a lot of BCA members caving is a very small part of their lives. The way a national organisation functions may not be very important to them.  I used to get ballots from a building society both to elect people onto the executive and to change the constitution or whatever.  It always went in the bin as I just wasn't that bothered what they did.

I seem to remember from the Crow ballot that the Electoral Reform Service that ran it, commented that low turnouts were very much the norm for small sporting organisations and the like.  So it appears this sort of return is quite normal and actually quite high on one side.
 

BCA Chair

Member
I see in my own clubs that there are loads of members who only want to go caving maybe once or twice a year (in fact, some never at all, they just like having the option to do so should the wish arise, and they are happy to support the sport). As Badlad says, caving is only a small part of their lives. While they might be happy to pay their subs to support their club and/or BCA, the interest in BCA 'politics' just isn't sufficient for them to want to get involved in ballots, no matter how easy we make those ballots to get involved with.

The BCA is working extremely hard at the moment to promote the benefits of membership, and of all the good work for caving nationally that is done with their membership money (it really isn't just about the public liability insurance):

Why join the BCA? (Taken from separate thread on membership fees)
The BCA is the UK?s national body for underground exploration. Your membership money goes towards funding conservation, education, access, training workshops, anchor installation, the British Caving Library (a library, archive and key resource), publications on matters that affect caving, international expeditions, plus numerous other activities which benefit cavers nationally. Almost all cavers will benefit from work funded by BCA from your membership money, both directly and via the Regional Councils, as well as via our recent efforts to support student and youth caving. Your money goes back into the sport, as well as covering the cost of the public liability insurance which we provide to all full members as a membership benefit. Thank you for joining the BCA!


I think... I hope... that message is starting to cut through a little but there is a lot more work needed, not only to showcase what we do, but also to actually do more for caving nationally with the funds we have. At the last Council meeting we passed the first budget with a deficit for years, with that money going to excellent caving causes and a reduction in fees, while also removing restrictions on what regional councils can claim for, encouraging them to do more for their regions. About ?5000 has gone our in the last few weeks to support conservation, access and cave monitoring projects in Mendips and Derbyshire. The coming Council meeting in January has more spending proposals already lined up for discussion.

Of course, persuading those for who caving is only an occasional hobby to join BCA for the good of the sport is one thing, but persuading them that they want to participate in the 'politics' is another. That might be a battle beyond our capabilities, but the efforts to inform more people of our work certainly can't hurt when it comes to inspiring people to have their say.

Perhaps a better way to look at the turnout is that over 1000 individual people and 86 groups did care enough to participate... 10-20 times more than what most village hall meeting rooms would accommodate.

Therefore, the turnout can be viewed in a more positive light if you try hard enough  :)
 
As has already been said, many more people / groups have been involved than the usual agm.

The BCA's adopted voting system is astonishinly easy to use (I have votes for various other bodies...).

I think it takes us in the right direction and I'm sure the turnout by individuals is pretty typical of organisation like BCA.

I am surprised that more 'groups' didn't use their vote.....

Anyway, excellent outcome.
 

ahinde

New member
I like to think that of the 170 plus BCA registered clubs - most of the large clubs made the effort to vote in the house of groups. There are a lot of micro clubs who are members of BCA to access regional permit schemes and unlikely to be engaged in BCA "politics". Similarly , the list of Mining Groups and multi activity clubs on BCA are unlikely to be excited about the way BCA does business. With this in mind I feel that most committed cavers have been reasonably well represented both individually and in the house of groups through this ballot.
Thank you to everyone who helped to design and run the ballot. Good luck with the modernisation program at BCA. :hug:
 

mikem

Well-known member
As the quorum for a general meeting is 10, then a 10,000% increase on that ain't to be sniffed at...

Sightly better than the otherwise similar percentages for BMC voting.
 

PeteHall

Moderator
I assume that the results will be circulated to the membership (clubs and individuals) by post/email as not all members use the forum.

So far I haven't seen anything on the email, either direct or via any of my clubs...
 

BCA Chair

Member
I'd love to email all of our members (or at least the ~4000 we have email addresses for) to inform them of the ballot result. Unfortunately however I do not have access to member data to allow me to do this. Furthermore our webmaster is still being refused access to this data despite an AGM and Council mandate to provide this access so that he can redevelop key BCA systems. I will ask those who do control access to our data whether they would be willing to send out an email. Rest assured, this is not a situation I am altogether happy with and am fighting to change.
 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
PeteHall said:
I assume that the results will be circulated to the membership (clubs and individuals) by post/email as not all members use the forum.

So far I haven't seen anything on the email, either direct or via any of my clubs...

The results were posted onto the BCA website and the link circulated as best I could across social media :)

https://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/doku.php
 

Cookie

New member
BCA Secretary said:
I'd love to email all of our members (or at least the ~4000 we have email addresses for) to inform them of the ballot result. Unfortunately however I do not have access to member data to allow me to do this. Furthermore our webmaster is still being refused access to this data despite an AGM and Council mandate to provide this access so that he can redevelop key BCA systems. I will ask those who do control access to our data whether they would be willing to send out an email. Rest assured, this is not a situation I am altogether happy with and am fighting to change.

I no longer use this forum because of the attacks and lies about me posted here by "fellow" BCA Council members.

This post is a total misrepresentation of the truth.
 

BCA Chair

Member
But it is exactly the truth Cookie.

The AGM accepted a motion that instructed specific accesses to key BCA systems to be granted to our new webmaster. You ignored repeated emails from me asking for these accesses to be granted, and then outright refused them in a face to face meeting.

The October Council meeting voted to endorse the AGM motion and further instructed you to provide these accesses. You have ignored further emails from me asking for this to be enacted and have ignored this request.

You are holding key BCA systems hostage from members and Council, refusing to give access to them where instructed, and consequently blocking them from much needed modernisation. Furthermore having seen your recent emails to the IT Working Group I also know that you are working behind the scenes to create rules intended to sustain the status quo, scupper what was agreed at the AGM and further block the efforts of those seeking (and sadly having to fight hard) to move the BCA into the modern world.

I did not want to voice these issues in such specific detail on a public forum nor resort to personal attacks. However as you have accused me of lying (or 'misrepresenting the truth', a pretty serious attack in its own right) then I am clearly going to defend myself from these accusations.

I was elected BCA Secretary on a modernising agenda and that is exactly what I am going to deliver.
 
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