Chocolate fireguard said:Ideally, decisions should be made by people who have spent a long time thinking about what might happen thereafter.
Chocolate fireguard said:... 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.
kay said:The problem with the Brexit referendum wasn't that too many people were allowed to vote.
andrewmc said: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.
Cavematt said: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!
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: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.
For comparison, what percentage of the membership have actually provided email addresses to the BCA?Bob Mehew said:So if less than 40% of members vote, then the matter fails.
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:For comparison, what percentage of the membership have actually provided email addresses to the BCA?
mikem said:I think that the liking for club voting may have been that members didn't have to attend the meeting themselves, rather than the club being a better representative! & that opinion may be changed by electronic voting.
andrewmc 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 chance 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.