Application for BCA Secretary
- Thread starter Cavematt
- Start date
I don't have any major objection to online voting for the BCA as the organisation doesn't hold any real power.
For everything else online voting is a really bad idea:
- Computer are a black box that spits out a number, how do you audit the software and hardware so that everyone can trust the result
- Compared to ballot or vote in person, it is relatively easy to scale up attacks.
- Ensuring anonymity is harder.
There is a reason national elections are still done with pencil, paper and manual counting.
For everything else online voting is a really bad idea:
- Computer are a black box that spits out a number, how do you audit the software and hardware so that everyone can trust the result
- Compared to ballot or vote in person, it is relatively easy to scale up attacks.
- Ensuring anonymity is harder.
There is a reason national elections are still done with pencil, paper and manual counting.
Chocolate fireguard
Active member
Ideally, decisions should be made by people who have spent a long time thinking about what might happen thereafter.
Nothing is perfect of course, and the law of unintended consequences will always mess things up to some extent, but allowing more people to take part in the decision-making process can only be a good idea if these people can be relied upon to do the thinking (Why are things this way? I may not like it but is there a good reason? What will happen if things get changed? Do I know enough to have an opinion that?s worth expressing? Could I put forward a reasoned argument to persuade people that I am right?).
I know things are not good now ? I clicked the link provided by Alastair and read the whole of the minutes of the last meeting. Even reading a dry set of minutes on a screen, the slow grind of bureaucracy with a background of teddies, rattles, teething rings etc hitting the floor came through all too well. I am not surprised that Pegasus found the experience uncomfortable. I would have walked out.
Modernisation, in the sense of getting more dedicated younger people involved is essential and thankfully it seems to be happening, but it is not true that everybody over the age of 50 is moribund. Many of the older people present at that meeting will still have a lot of positive things to contribute. And experience should not be written off without good reason.
Letting every BCA member vote with the click of a button would not be a good idea (although describing it as ?modernising? and ?more democratic? makes it sound superficially attractive). Even postal voting (I know it?s too expensive) at least filters out those who care so little that they can?t even be bothered to post a letter.
The idea of taking the decision-making process away from a group of people who are perhaps not well respected but best able to come to a reasoned conclusion, and farming it out to others who can?t be guaranteed to put the same amount of thought into it (but can express an opinion without any real commitment of time or trouble) was trialed for us a while ago by a chap called Cameron. The final verdict is not in yet, but early indications are that it has not gone as smoothly as was hoped.
I know all this sounds negative and old fashioned. Perhaps I should have pressed ?Post? at the end of the first sentence then nobody could object.
Nothing is perfect of course, and the law of unintended consequences will always mess things up to some extent, but allowing more people to take part in the decision-making process can only be a good idea if these people can be relied upon to do the thinking (Why are things this way? I may not like it but is there a good reason? What will happen if things get changed? Do I know enough to have an opinion that?s worth expressing? Could I put forward a reasoned argument to persuade people that I am right?).
I know things are not good now ? I clicked the link provided by Alastair and read the whole of the minutes of the last meeting. Even reading a dry set of minutes on a screen, the slow grind of bureaucracy with a background of teddies, rattles, teething rings etc hitting the floor came through all too well. I am not surprised that Pegasus found the experience uncomfortable. I would have walked out.
Modernisation, in the sense of getting more dedicated younger people involved is essential and thankfully it seems to be happening, but it is not true that everybody over the age of 50 is moribund. Many of the older people present at that meeting will still have a lot of positive things to contribute. And experience should not be written off without good reason.
Letting every BCA member vote with the click of a button would not be a good idea (although describing it as ?modernising? and ?more democratic? makes it sound superficially attractive). Even postal voting (I know it?s too expensive) at least filters out those who care so little that they can?t even be bothered to post a letter.
The idea of taking the decision-making process away from a group of people who are perhaps not well respected but best able to come to a reasoned conclusion, and farming it out to others who can?t be guaranteed to put the same amount of thought into it (but can express an opinion without any real commitment of time or trouble) was trialed for us a while ago by a chap called Cameron. The final verdict is not in yet, but early indications are that it has not gone as smoothly as was hoped.
I know all this sounds negative and old fashioned. Perhaps I should have pressed ?Post? at the end of the first sentence then nobody could object.
2xw
Active member
Some things I can address after my last report to council about electronic voting:
1. I don't have any concerns about people trying to attack an electronic ballot. If anybody is passionate enough to do that they need recruiting to council anyways, and there is much else labour intensive ways of influencing the direction of the BCA than botnetting votes/faking BCA membership numbers etc. You could have more influence by just turning up to an AGM or running for an officer position (there are plenty unopposed!)
2. It's not going to be a fire and forget vote. In my ideal world, you'll log in to BCA Online and have access to the AGM minutes (perhaps summaries or even recorded as a video
) you can then vote on a number of motions. The experienced people who do be thinking will be the ones proposing the motions, and undertaking normal business in council meetings etc. Electronic voting, as I envisage it, will fulfil exactly the same function as an AGM, but you don't have to drive 400 miles to be bored to death.
The problem is not that people aren't thinking about decisions. The problem is that the current structure of the BCA allows motivated individuals and small cabals to waste enormous amounts of everyone's time (and members money!) with constitutional minutiae and spurious tripe.
If you value the time of council members at ?7 an hour then the CRoW debacle, which was held up and filibustered by a vanishingly small %age of the membership would run to a cost of tens of thousands of pounds. Electronic voting would have solved this... If just 3% of the membership had voted then it wouldn't have taken as long.
To be a modern, useful, efficient organisation, we need the membership to be involved with the bca. But being involved with the BCA is shit. Imagine "a tale of two cities" as an audiobook slowed down to x0.1 and that's what it's like. I'm worried I might have some sort of brain death in the middle of a 7 hour meeting and nobody would notice. So we need to make it easier than travelling to sit in a 7 hour meeting just so you can put your hand in the air a few times, and electronic voting is one of those ways.
It can be better!
1. I don't have any concerns about people trying to attack an electronic ballot. If anybody is passionate enough to do that they need recruiting to council anyways, and there is much else labour intensive ways of influencing the direction of the BCA than botnetting votes/faking BCA membership numbers etc. You could have more influence by just turning up to an AGM or running for an officer position (there are plenty unopposed!)
2. It's not going to be a fire and forget vote. In my ideal world, you'll log in to BCA Online and have access to the AGM minutes (perhaps summaries or even recorded as a video
) you can then vote on a number of motions. The experienced people who do be thinking will be the ones proposing the motions, and undertaking normal business in council meetings etc. Electronic voting, as I envisage it, will fulfil exactly the same function as an AGM, but you don't have to drive 400 miles to be bored to death. The problem is not that people aren't thinking about decisions. The problem is that the current structure of the BCA allows motivated individuals and small cabals to waste enormous amounts of everyone's time (and members money!) with constitutional minutiae and spurious tripe.
If you value the time of council members at ?7 an hour then the CRoW debacle, which was held up and filibustered by a vanishingly small %age of the membership would run to a cost of tens of thousands of pounds. Electronic voting would have solved this... If just 3% of the membership had voted then it wouldn't have taken as long.
To be a modern, useful, efficient organisation, we need the membership to be involved with the bca. But being involved with the BCA is shit. Imagine "a tale of two cities" as an audiobook slowed down to x0.1 and that's what it's like. I'm worried I might have some sort of brain death in the middle of a 7 hour meeting and nobody would notice. So we need to make it easier than travelling to sit in a 7 hour meeting just so you can put your hand in the air a few times, and electronic voting is one of those ways.
It can be better!
andrewmcleod
Well-known member
Chocolate fireguard said:
The current AGM model is a wonderful demonstration of poorly-considered off-the-cuff decision-making and all that entails. In an ideal world, as practiced by most larger bodies, all the politics (and in many cases the voting) is done well before the AGM so that by the time you get to the AGM everyone has had a change to at least have a think about it. Sadly, this is not (currently) how the BCA AGM 'operates' (using operates in the loosest sense of the word)...
Most of the BCA AGMs I've been to have been an absolute cluster of motions and amendments. If I got a pound for every time someone asks 'could you read it out again so we know what we are voting for' after the second or third amendment I'd probably pay for my petrol to the next BCA AGM. These amendments are generally taken from the floor and accepted by the proposer without debate or a vote so the final motion you vote on bears little resemblance to what was published in advance. One year there was a tangled mess of amendments introduced at the start of the AGM which bore little resemblance to what was published in advance. These were of course again amended on the basis of one or two people making a comment, and the proposer of the motion accepting the amendment without debate or a vote.
Personally, I think having a bit of time after the AGM to actually vote on all these things (and at least have a chance to complain about the wording even if it's too late to change it) would be a massive improvement.
I think the BCA AGM needs significant procedural changes in the way it operates (it should take 45 minutes - the BMC one has done in the past and they have ten times the members!), but online voting would go a massive way to increasing the democratic reach and robustness of the BCA.
Matt is putting the effort in here, by posting here on UKCaving for debate (and through other channels), to make sure people know what the score is before they get to the AGM. This is how it should be done.
Chocolate fireguard
Active member
2xw & andrewmc: you both talk a lot of sense re the way a meeting of the BCA seems to run (or perhaps crawl) at the moment. At least so far as I can see from the minutes of one meeting, and I have no intention of looking at any others - after a working lifetime where I averaged at least a couple of hours of meetings per week I have managed to give them up completely.
With modern (to me at least) technology such as group emails, webinars etc I imagine it would be possible to do away with travel to meetings entirely, and voting by the committee could obviously be done electronically.
That sounds like a great idea, for the environment as well as for the people involved. Election of the committee would be a piece of cake too.
Anything from the current system to the one above (depending where the people who do the work want to stop) would be fine by me, and probably fine by most people.
That's not what I am on about.
In an ideal world the decisions would be made on behalf of BCA members by a committee elected and trusted by those members.
When you've stopped laughing: I know things are a bit short of that ideal at the moment, but the way forward is not to allow the whole membership to have an input on every decision, it is to elect a committee that can do it right.
And yes, I also know that people willing to serve on committees from club level upwards are thin on the ground. Or have been. It does sound as though things might be getting better for the BCA at least, and hopefully will continue to do so especially if the committee procedure can be streamlined.
All analogies fail if pushed far enough, but here's one anyway: when you're performing a scientific experiment you need to get as many results as possible, for various reasons mainly to do with how confident you can be about the final conclusion. If you think you don't have enough and throw in a few thousand random sets of results to make it look more impressive, all you finish up with is ....... shit (thanks 2xw)
With modern (to me at least) technology such as group emails, webinars etc I imagine it would be possible to do away with travel to meetings entirely, and voting by the committee could obviously be done electronically.
That sounds like a great idea, for the environment as well as for the people involved. Election of the committee would be a piece of cake too.
Anything from the current system to the one above (depending where the people who do the work want to stop) would be fine by me, and probably fine by most people.
That's not what I am on about.
In an ideal world the decisions would be made on behalf of BCA members by a committee elected and trusted by those members.
When you've stopped laughing: I know things are a bit short of that ideal at the moment, but the way forward is not to allow the whole membership to have an input on every decision, it is to elect a committee that can do it right.
And yes, I also know that people willing to serve on committees from club level upwards are thin on the ground. Or have been. It does sound as though things might be getting better for the BCA at least, and hopefully will continue to do so especially if the committee procedure can be streamlined.
All analogies fail if pushed far enough, but here's one anyway: when you're performing a scientific experiment you need to get as many results as possible, for various reasons mainly to do with how confident you can be about the final conclusion. If you think you don't have enough and throw in a few thousand random sets of results to make it look more impressive, all you finish up with is ....... shit (thanks 2xw
)
kay
Well-known member
Chocolate fireguard said:
The way most organisations run is to have major decisions on direction taken by the whole membership at the AGM, and a Committee to get into the technical detail of how to implement those decisions, and to take day-to-day decisions. That's a long way from "allowing the whole membership to have an input on every decision".
The problem with the Brexit referendum wasn't that too many people were allowed to vote.
Madness
New member
I don't think that anyone has suggested that the entire membership needs to be consulted and allowed to vote on every decision. That would serve no useful purpose. I don't want to vote on how much to set the stationery budget at or what colour the BCA logo should be, but I'd quite like to vote on important matters without having to travel hundreds of miles to the AGM to do so.
Chocolate fireguard
Active member
kay said:
You are right.
The problem was that too many people did vote.
I didn't because I realised that I didn't understand the issues and that in order to do so I would have to spend many weeks of my life on the subject (with no guarantee of success) and even then my careful decision would be cancelled by someone voting on a whim.
I have stopped asking the leave-voters I know how they thought the Irish border problem, or the Gib. question would be sorted when they voted - it's too depressing.
The decision was too complicated for the vast majority of people, including me.
It's interesting to reflect that, whether leaving turns out to be good or bad for this country, about half the voters will have made the wrong decision. That's the effect of the random results of course.
Returning to the BCA voting system, I think electronic voting to elect committee members would be good, as I said.
It has been suggested that electronic voting would only be used for important decisions, but really that means more complicated decisions and then it would seem best that the people having a say on those should be the ones who are willing to go to a bit of trouble to get to a meeting because they are the ones more likely to go to the trouble to do a bit of research.
And do we really think that if a system is set up there won't be pressure to use it for more and more decisions?
Cavematt
Well-known member
Chocolate Fireguard: You make some perfectly reasonable points and you justify your opinion well.
Perhaps it is worth pointing out (in case it was not clear) that the online voting is going to be limited to General Meetings. The annual day-to-day running of the BCA will still be managed by the elected Council. In theory only motions of major significance to the way the BCA functions should go to an AGM, where I think it only fair that everyone who has paid to be a member of the Association is given good opportunity to vote without travelling across the country. I don't agree that being able to vote on such a matter should be exclusively limited to those willing to travel, nor that someone willing to travel has any more a well-researched opinion than someone who is not.
Kat: A very astute question! Changing who can vote at General Meetings and introduction of online voting ARE two matters, but I disagree that they are disconnected.
Online voting could be arranged using the current two-house voting system. The problem is that it would be significantly more complex and would involve much more work for the Secretary (which perhaps unsurprisingly I would like to avoid if I am to sustain any kind of life after June 9th). The two house voting system requires some kind of proof that the person who is voting for a club truely represents that club, which would be hard to administer via an online system. My vision is that online voting is administered via BCA online, where login is via your BCA number as username, so is only easily workable when voting is individuals only. To include group voting would require a more complicated system... not impossible but not easy!
Removing the group vote but without bringing in online voting is unfeasible, because it then puts the fate of motions into the hands of the small number of individuals that attend a General Meeting in person (typically around 1% of the entire membership). This means any club could turn up with its entire membership and pass anything it wants. On the other hand, introducing online voting without removing group voting will be very challenging for the online system.
Naturally I wouldn't wish to remove the group vote just for convenience. I genuinely believe the BCA needs to move away from group voting, which gives the same weighted vote to groups regardless of how many cavers they represent, and duplicates representation (why does a club need to vote, when all it's members can easily do so; If the club feels strongly about something they can lobby their members to vote accordingly). Therefore, you are right Kat; the two issues could be considered separately, but there is so much overlap that I have chosen to link them together in my proposal because I feel this is the most efficient and practical way to administer online voting while simultaneously improving BCA democracy.
Perhaps it is worth pointing out (in case it was not clear) that the online voting is going to be limited to General Meetings. The annual day-to-day running of the BCA will still be managed by the elected Council. In theory only motions of major significance to the way the BCA functions should go to an AGM, where I think it only fair that everyone who has paid to be a member of the Association is given good opportunity to vote without travelling across the country. I don't agree that being able to vote on such a matter should be exclusively limited to those willing to travel, nor that someone willing to travel has any more a well-researched opinion than someone who is not.
Kat: A very astute question! Changing who can vote at General Meetings and introduction of online voting ARE two matters, but I disagree that they are disconnected.
Online voting could be arranged using the current two-house voting system. The problem is that it would be significantly more complex and would involve much more work for the Secretary (which perhaps unsurprisingly I would like to avoid if I am to sustain any kind of life after June 9th). The two house voting system requires some kind of proof that the person who is voting for a club truely represents that club, which would be hard to administer via an online system. My vision is that online voting is administered via BCA online, where login is via your BCA number as username, so is only easily workable when voting is individuals only. To include group voting would require a more complicated system... not impossible but not easy!
Removing the group vote but without bringing in online voting is unfeasible, because it then puts the fate of motions into the hands of the small number of individuals that attend a General Meeting in person (typically around 1% of the entire membership). This means any club could turn up with its entire membership and pass anything it wants. On the other hand, introducing online voting without removing group voting will be very challenging for the online system.
Naturally I wouldn't wish to remove the group vote just for convenience. I genuinely believe the BCA needs to move away from group voting, which gives the same weighted vote to groups regardless of how many cavers they represent, and duplicates representation (why does a club need to vote, when all it's members can easily do so; If the club feels strongly about something they can lobby their members to vote accordingly). Therefore, you are right Kat; the two issues could be considered separately, but there is so much overlap that I have chosen to link them together in my proposal because I feel this is the most efficient and practical way to administer online voting while simultaneously improving BCA democracy.
alastairgott
Well-known member
andrewmc said:
Wow, no, Meetings are for making decisions. you say there is too many changes at the meeting, but delaying the decision till afterwards means that nothing will actually get decided.
You'll have to wait for the minutes to be released before you can produce the "vote", then you'll have to circulate the vote to membership.
At least, tying people down in a room and not letting them leave till a decision has been made, means a decision actually gets made.
A constitution should not need to be changed every year, so constitutional amendments should be well thought through and rigorously ironed out before they are taken to the meeting. If an amendment needs amending, then it strikes me that the person submitting didn't get pedants to proof read it.
Chocolate fireguard
Active member
Cavematt
My opinions on this sort of thing have never gone down well.
It seems obvious to me that if someone is going to vote on something that will affect others then as much thought as possible should have gone into it.
Some people are willing to put in a lot of thought, some not very much. But electronic voting allows both to have the same influence on the outcome.
With people nothing is certain, but generally if you have spent the time to think something through to the best of your ability you are more likely to want to be heard, and to go to more trouble to make sure you are.
You don?t have to be right, just thoughtful.
But I know I am on a loser. Our electoral system doesn?t require any proof of thought, and politicians are so desperate to increase turnout to lend credibility to the process that electronic voting will surely come.
For BCA in the future, hopefully a streamlined committee system made up of people the active cavers feel they can trust to make important decisions will not require much in the way of voting by the membership.
Ideas on electronic voting apart, I am sure you will do a good job.
My opinions on this sort of thing have never gone down well.
It seems obvious to me that if someone is going to vote on something that will affect others then as much thought as possible should have gone into it.
Some people are willing to put in a lot of thought, some not very much. But electronic voting allows both to have the same influence on the outcome.
With people nothing is certain, but generally if you have spent the time to think something through to the best of your ability you are more likely to want to be heard, and to go to more trouble to make sure you are.
You don?t have to be right, just thoughtful.
But I know I am on a loser. Our electoral system doesn?t require any proof of thought, and politicians are so desperate to increase turnout to lend credibility to the process that electronic voting will surely come.
For BCA in the future, hopefully a streamlined committee system made up of people the active cavers feel they can trust to make important decisions will not require much in the way of voting by the membership.
Ideas on electronic voting apart, I am sure you will do a good job.
Bob Mehew
Well-known member
Cavematt said:
The current requirement for proof is to stop a person turning up at a GM and claiming they represent a group. (Individuals have to show their membership card.) Currently each group has an identified individual who is the link with BCA and who receives the notification of a GM. The same process can apply to an on line vote. If the named individual for a group is sloppy about the security of their vote, then that is their problem. We ran the 2017 ballot on the same process for individuals and clubs; we just had two spread sheets covering one for individuals and one for clubs. We included a unique number on the ballot form as a means of proof that the version we sent out to a named individual (be DIM/ CIM or Group) was the form / vote we got back - equivalent to a password. You will need at least an ID and a password for security for individual on line system since membership numbers are well known. I suggest the need for having voting systems for individuals and groups is surely not a significant elevation in complication; it is just duplication bar the name heading the web page?
Please don't think I am against removing the group vote but when we negotiated the constitution for BCA there was a substantial opposition to having individual votes. A sizeable contingent of individuals still think their club is a better representative of themselves.Cavematt said:
I would however suggest that we should learn from the Swiss who hold regularly hold referendums that there should be a participatory threshold of say 40% of the membership. So if less than 40% of members vote, then the matter fails.
Bob Mehew
Well-known member
Under Data Protection rules, I was not allowed to keep the data for the 2017 constitutional ballot and I don't have the time spare to search my 1000 plus emails on the topic to see if I did release the summary data. But from memory, in that vote, we sent out some 4000 plus emails and some 1000 plus letters containing the ballot paper. Cookie will have accurate figures but my memory is around 1000 members have indicated they are prepared to receive news and other information.mikem said:
One key point is there is a difference between using an email address to communicate to a member on some matter specific to membership, like a vote or membership renewal and for sending them information like news. This could of course be changed by 'simply' making it a condition of joining BCA that a person accepts they will receive both membership related material as well as a newsletter by email if they have an email address. Having said that there is a minor problem in that most of the email addresses were indirectly supplied by clubs and not by the individuals. I am not overly confident that clubs had the required permission to do so, especially given the current standard of granting permission based on last year's GDPR.
I would add for Matt's information that checking the postal addresses was a time killer which I managed to step around by finding a company who would bulk mail without checking post codes matched addresses. Even then I had to do a moderate amount of tiding up the addresses to ensure the post code came last and supply ones where it was missing. Poor Damian got caught by using a company for the previous ballot who insisted that every address had to match the post code.
Bob Mehew
Well-known member
mikem said:
I am of course citing views expressed back in 2003. The logic used by certain representatives was NCA had club & RCC only voting so that was all that was required for BCA. The counter argument started with clubs could only gain insurance cover by all their members being covered and that BCA could only offer insurance to individuals as a benefit of membership. That position was based on legal advice. So we had to have individual membership. But it was inconceivable that we could exclude individuals from having a vote. They eventually accepted that point. A suggestion that clubs should not have a vote was rejected outright by the same representatives. A compromise resulted.
I should add that of the 1000 plus members for whom BCA do not have an email address, we are likely to find a small number (my guess is around hundred) do not have an email address at all. The key point is not sending the message out which is a fairly simple process either by email or by post, but getting the member to vote on line. I would suggest that only a handful of members are not able to get to a computer with internet access to vote on line. (I am thinking of the few who are either now so infirm as to not be mobile and so can't get to their local library, or are so lacking in faculties as to be unable to use a computer.) And of course they could delegate their vote to another person if they so wish.
Robert Scott
Member
andrewmc said:
Might I suggest that there are no amendments allowed on the day of the AGM.
The 2018 agenda has the following-
Motions for discussion (see linked papers).
24. Working Group to establish BCA future vision and strategy
25. Appointment of a technical adviser to set up remote access to meetings
26. Electronic voting
27. Rename Training Committee and Training Officer
28. Training Committee terms of reference
29. Establishment of Youth and Development standing committee
30. Disbanding of the Legal and Insurance standing committee.
I would suggest replacing "Motions for discussion" with "Proposals", where for each topic there is a simple statement of what should be done or what should be changed and if necessary by whom and by when. Of course, you might still have linked papers giving the rationale for the proposal.
There might be some little discussion around the proposal but the aim of the meeting should be to vote Yes or No on the proposal and not to change or refine the meaning of the proposal.
Thanks Matt & Bob on your helpful comments regarding on-line voting and the Club/Group voting considerations.
Have to admit I struggle to understand why it would that much more complex to enable Groups to be included in an on-line voting system and do not believe this should be a justification for removing that Group vote. Any such on-line system needs to be fully transparent and stand up to rigorous independent scrutiny anyway.
There may of course be other perfectly valid reasons for changing the system. The BMC went through a similar process many years ago. However my recollection is that by that stage the BMC direct membership outweighed those who were members via clubs and it was a logical progression for that organisation. The BCA situation is currently very different (I don't know the ratio of DIMs to CIMs but imagine it is pretty low).
It is the Clubs that bear the administrative burden of the BCA insurance scheme for their members. I believe most believe people are members of the BCA purely because they are members of a club and have to be under the insurance scheme, or they want individual insurance, rather than actively wishing to be members of the BCA for other reason. Given that current state of play I find it very difficult to agree with the proposal to remove the Group vote.
Change is good but sometimes certain aspects have to be given due consideration and time for debate in open consultation (not simply on a forum such as UK Caving) and not a whole raft of changes made at once. Why not focus on improving cavers awareness of the BCA and what it does, and can do in the future, for the caving community and all the other really good aspects (including on-line voting) of what is being proposed here?
Have to admit I struggle to understand why it would that much more complex to enable Groups to be included in an on-line voting system and do not believe this should be a justification for removing that Group vote. Any such on-line system needs to be fully transparent and stand up to rigorous independent scrutiny anyway.
There may of course be other perfectly valid reasons for changing the system. The BMC went through a similar process many years ago. However my recollection is that by that stage the BMC direct membership outweighed those who were members via clubs and it was a logical progression for that organisation. The BCA situation is currently very different (I don't know the ratio of DIMs to CIMs but imagine it is pretty low).
It is the Clubs that bear the administrative burden of the BCA insurance scheme for their members. I believe most believe people are members of the BCA purely because they are members of a club and have to be under the insurance scheme, or they want individual insurance, rather than actively wishing to be members of the BCA for other reason. Given that current state of play I find it very difficult to agree with the proposal to remove the Group vote.
Change is good but sometimes certain aspects have to be given due consideration and time for debate in open consultation (not simply on a forum such as UK Caving) and not a whole raft of changes made at once. Why not focus on improving cavers awareness of the BCA and what it does, and can do in the future, for the caving community and all the other really good aspects (including on-line voting) of what is being proposed here?
