What is AGM

@jobooth Congratulations! You found a bug! If you enter a negative number the candidate dissapears! Now some might think this a feature..... but i will sort it out negative numbers=unranked. Anyway thanks.

Also instructions should make clear that< 1 or >49 =unranked

Yes i will make a page that shows results , at least in testing phase it will be fun

Can I suggest using Mumble for the AGM? It's voice and text only, no video, but having a video meeting with hundreds of people uses impractical amounts of bandwidth. Overseas Pirate Parties have used Mumble for meetings with hundreds of people in one 'room' (channel). It's possible to have subchannels inside a room, set up so that one subchannel for the facilitators and people on the speaking list can be heard by everyone in another one for general membership, but not vice-versa, preventing disruptions and interjections.

Mumble also has a built in recorder, like HangOuts. Both Mumble clients and Murmur software are free code, and Mumble clients can be freely downloaded for all major desktop and mobile platforms.

One way to formulate the agenda would be to create an AGM subgroup here in Loomio (or a board on the website forum if members prefer), and create a discussion thread for each piece of business people want on the AGM agenda. That way, as Ross suggests, clear yes/no proposals could be formulated, and consensus tested, with the AGM vote making the outcome binding. Great to see GITHub used to brainstorm agenda items too.

Great innovation with the vote tokens Fred. Would it be possible to use PGP signing to uniquely associate each vote token with a member, without revealing their vote to anyone but the Returning Officer? I'm not familiar enough with PGP to explain how it's supposed to work, but there was some discussion of this here last year.

Mumble would be a good idea - hadn't thought of not video. Good idea @strypey

I agree much of the membership has used or understands Loomio voting - but we shouldn't rely on it - especially if we are trying to consolidate into internet.org.nz

On the 'voting off the island' amendments - I think the existing provisions for the principles of natural justice and clear process should work, including the provision for the Secretary to choose to bat away frivolous claims before examining them in detail with the exec. It is unclear to me what really happened with the various resignations or ejections from the executive to date - it would be good to have some minutes or transparent process around it explained at the AGM, and a clear process going forward.

@rossburrows :

I propose an amendment to the constitution to allow the Secretary to suspend any elected exec. member indefinitely who all the remaining exec. members unanimously vote as being guilty of conduct unbecoming to the best interests of Internet Party.

This is a lot of power to concentrate in very few hands, and comes with the danger of groupthink; the Exec being focussed on always agreeing, in fear of robust discussion and representing minority positions from the membership resulting in the person speaking up being disciplined by the others.

I'm not intimately familiar with the IP constitution, but in this situation, it's usual for a Special General Meeting to be called, and the decision about disciplining an Exec put back to the membership, whose representatives they are. This seems like a more democratic process, less vulnerable to kangeroo court processes inside the Exec.

The provision in IP Constitution allowing %75 of exec to remove a member isn't (in my view) actually about "discipline" or "bringing into dissrepute". It is about "what if an exec election delivers an exec that is disfunctional?" Obviously in the first instance we are expected to "get over it". But if that is given a really good faith attempt and exec is still disfunctional then there needs to be some circuit breaker so that the party does not languish headless. The most important thing is for those who put them selves forward and members voting have realistic idea of what exec is for. Conflict of ideas can be handled and is often a good thing, a fundimental conflict of purpose is very much harder to resolve.

Agree with @jobooth ...

I would prefer a distributed model of party websites though. Let's avoid the crash that happened when the main site went down.

I would love to see clearer minuting of the exec meetings. This is in fact the secretaries job isn't it, Fred? You do the minutes, at the next meeting the minutes are confirmed?

That would probably be time to release them, late enough that the exec is still ahead of the game and early enough that the membership can still keep up.

Having unrecallable delegates elected for a fixed period of time is already a step away from democracy (as we've seen with successive NZ governments!). A Exec of elected representatives is at least suppose to represent all the different perspectives within the party. With the Constitution change you propose Fred, a majority faction on the Exec could just kick other elected members off, and stack the Exec with their own supporters. This is not even representative governance, let alone democratic.

@fredlook

It is about “what if an exec election delivers an exec that is disfunctional?”

Ideally the inability of candidate A to work with candidate B should be disclosed honestly at the AGM, allowing the membership to elect an Exec who can work together. Failing that, as explained above, you call an SGM and hand the decision about how to proceed back to the membership, where it belongs.

I agree much of the membership has used or understands Loomio voting - but we shouldn’t rely on it - especially if we are trying to consolidate into internet.org.nz

Still trying to work out how this decision was made, by whom, and why. Especially since internet.org.nz offers no proposal engine at all. I brought up the question on the website thread, but with all the different subjects being discussed there, it got a bit lost.

@strypey I propose no change re removal of exec members , i was referring to the existing provision 8.14 . Its fairly standard and exists for good reason.

One thing we have learned from Loomio (and CIR in general) is that its a bad idea to just let individuals put proposals, A proposal needs to be appropriate, positive, logical, and do-able. They should be formated by an appropriatly skilled committee or they may do harm !

edit [oops thats 8.18]

I don't think the problem we have had with successive NZ govts is the un-recallable nature but instead that they lied through their teeth to get there and then were un-recallable.

As for representatives representing all of the party, that is supposed to be one of the responsibilities of an exec. Although, I can't remember that begin written anywhere in the constitution. Due to the nature of an election by numbers probably the worst we should hope for is each exec to represent a large majority of the electors.

The ability of the exec to work together is often not able to be ascertained at the election. As was shown at the last election, when people get the votes and a little bit of power things tend to fall apart if there is an inability to work as a team.

With the resignation of the last exec member to go sideways (James Abbott - I could try not to say his name but that just makes it sound like I am talking about Voldemort) the exec went from being locked in status to actually doing something so the ability of the exec to expel a member should be strengthened in my opinion. Unless we want to spend six months after every election unable to do anything due to one member? It should be simple but getting 50 members together at an SGM created by a broken executive was (8.18).

I am unsure whether the exec would be able to stack itself as well, as there is a clear directive to the sec that elections for new exec (8.19) must be carried out as soon as practicable. So all new exec would be elected by the members. Until that point they can only appoint ex officio members with no voting rights.

I agree with Strypey on the Loomio prospect. Loomio is open and solid and with appropriate moderation would be the best place for an election (remembering my views that we should be distributed as well).

@maelwryth As for exec representing "all of party" inthink this is really important and members should continue to be vigilent on this, and not to fall into the trap other parties have of appointing exec members who promote them selves as representing a particular faction. It is each exec member representing the interest of all , not a group of representitives of different factions!
I find loomio to be more user friendly than our forums. I think we should have our own instance there.
The problems of clutter and destructive behaviour can be mitigated in the initial setup and then good moderation.
The setting up of this particular instance makes it hard to bring in moderation after the fact.