Scott’s thread about the voting policy got me to notice something.
The voting policy (http://makeict.org/wiki/Voting) says
Any member in good standing can vote at the annual meeting
But the standing rules (http://makeict.org/wiki/Standing_rules) say
All members will go through a 30 day probationary period before they gain voting rights.
I believe we have decided in the past that anything on the standing rules page trumps other policies. Can I get some agreements on this?
Did you also notice in the line:
Membership and voting rights will be suspended after 3 months of non-payment.
for a 3 month period non-paying members can vote.
I completely understand the 30 day probationary period. This is a good block against “stuffing the ballot box” with members we will never see again…
From a practical standpoint, our membership software suspends membership 10 days after a missed payment and the list of voting members is generated with that software. I suppose someone who had their membership expire 2 months ago could demand the right to vote, but they won’t receive the email without intervention.
I believe we’ve respected the 30-day probationary period in the past, but I haven’t found any email yet that confirms that.
The 30-day rule makes good sense to me, so I would go with it unless someone can find strong evidence to the contrary.
Kip would probably know how he generated the voter list last year. It is complicated by the fact that we have month-to-month membership.
Suppose I’ve been a member for 3 years solid, but then I lapse for a month and then rejoin 2 weeks before the election. Am I a member in good standing?
Waiting 3 months to suspend voting rights for non-paying members seems bizarre to me. I would make it 30 days at most but would prefer 10 days to 2 weeks.
I’ve ceased to be amazed by how our bylaws and standing rules always seem to come up short when we go looking for a crisp answer to an important question. I feel this is the result of the way we make piecemeal changes to try to fix isolated issues. We really need to do a bottom review and rewrite of the bylaws and standing rules.
I know i am starting to get nit picky on things. 
The bylaws do have a section on Elections (Art V: Sec 3).
Each member present shall be given an opportunity to be a candidate for any elected position on the board. If there is more than one candidate for an officer position, the candidate which obtains the highest number votes from voting members present shall be elected.
Does this mean that election will be determined at the end of the annual meeting on Sunday the 17th of June 2018? Or is voting being done via email over a time period?
For the purposes of the annual meeting, voting needs to happen electronically so if you’re voting, you’re “electronically present”. I admit this is not written very clearly.
In the past we’ve taken an relaxed view on that point so we could do online voting. At least last year, the voting for board members was done online via a SurveyMonkey blast email. The survey was sent out a few hours after the actual annual meeting and lasted for 48 hours. I don’t remember if the online voting including anything other than just the voting for board members. I tend to think it did not, but my memory isn’t very clear on that.
Scott, it’s great that you are pointing out some of these discrepancies or inconsistencies that really need to be cleaned up. Hopefully this will help raise awareness of some of the issues with our rules and bylaws. Too often in the past we’ve just accepted one person’s narrow interpretation of our conflicting rules and bylaws, or we collectively agreed to ignore something that is obviously broken or wrong. This is clearly not the best way to run an organization the size of ours…
The survey that went out last year included voting on board members, as well as votes on Bylaws changes and Standing Rules changes.