[Amendement] Voting week

Online GA May 2020 Statutes Amendments
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motion for statute amendment; May, 2nd, submitted by the pirate party austria

M2: PPI voting week

At the last general assembly (GA) it came to our attention, that there is a wish for more member participation as well as a perceived lack of voting mechanisms within PPI by some members. In order to fix that a motion to introduce a permanent general assembly mode was forwarded. Pirate Party Austria was opposed to this motion, as we think it was in violation of established statutes and needs a complete rewrite of given and proven statues. Furthermore a permanent mode could make PPI more prone to malevolent individuals while the benefits of a permanent open GA mode can also be achieved by a different, more secure and procedurally simplistic system. This is our recommendation for such a system.

Introducing PPI voting week

Voting week is an asynchrous email based voting mode that enables members as well as the board to achieve a general assembly level decision without actually having to hold a GA. It ensures a full week of vote submission for maximum inclusion and participation and introduces a 1/3 member right to hold a voting week. The procedure works as follows:

The voting week will be initiated either by a simple majority vote of the board of PPI or by a motion introduced by at least 1/3 of registered members of PPI. Once quorum is established a follow-up public announcement to all members starts the 6 week period by next monday at 00:00 hours local time. First week will be used for the introduction of statute amendments that have a four week filing period. Week one to four will be the time to introduce general motions and to promote and debate. Week five will be a frozen state were PPI announces all submissions publicly and sends out the order of business to all members. On Week 6 from monday 00:00 to sunday 24:00 local time all members are to vote on the amendments and motions by their delegates. All votes will be published by PPI and sent to the members. Votes can be revoked but not changed within the following 24 hours then the results will be final. The results of voting week are equal to GA decisions. Regular rules apply.

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Statute amendment

A point (8) should hereby be appended to IX. General Assembly:

(8) A voting week equaling an extraordinary session can be held at the request of one third of the Members or by a decision of the board. Procedure as specified in the Rules of Procedure of the PPI General Assembly Article 9 applies.

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Rules of Procedure

An Article 9 Voting Week should be appended to the Rules of Procedure of the PPI General Assembly:

Art. 9 Voting Week

(1) Once voting week is decided, the board is to a publicly announce voting week including dates and deadlines. A member notification is mandatory.

(2) The six week process starts by the following monday at 00:00 local time.

(3) Statute amendments need to be submitted during week one.

(4) Motions can be submitted in week one throughout week four.

(5) Week five is a frozen state. All submitted amendments and motions need to be publicly announced during week five. A member notification including the order of business for week 6 is mandatory.

(6) All delegates can submit their votes in week 6 starting at monday at 00:00 and ending at sunday 24:00 local time.

(7) A follow-up member notification including all votes cast is mandatory.

(8) Votes can be revoked by delegates within 24 hours after the member notification. Votes cannot be changed.

(9) After (8) all votes are final, a public announcement is to be given and decisions to be set in place.

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Could we not do it by Email?

There must be a better way for open and accountable voting.

Im all for email announcement.
I think, that all amandements and motions need to by publicly announced before or at the start of frozen week.
Also voting process needst to be established at that moment.

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More remarks

  1. as 1/3 of Ordinary Members constitute quorum, it makes no sense, tha same (or Bigger if registered members are counted) group of 1/3 of Members schoud initiate voting week.

Iniciation is usually held by smaller group, than the one that is reguired for decision.
Something like >1/6 i.e. 1/10th would make sense in this case.

  1. As this is just special type of extraordinary online assembly, i see no reason to change the statutes. We have art. XI. (4), which should be IMHO sufficient for this change.

  2. One Voting week should be limited by topic given by original proposal/initiative. I dont want six weeks initiated for revorking of CoA or Membership overtaken by political motion on current topics, or something.

1 Like
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Thanks. Here we go.

Could we not do it by Email?

I don’t see a better way that is simple and yet grants some accuntability, including (maybe) having a proper pirate address as well as, and that is important in practical sense, the sending time in local time, which emails include. There would be different ways to do it, like creating accounts in congressus or accepting any way of message whether it is instant messaging or by phone. The first would be a bureaucratic effort that needs regular checking but can maybe be delegated to the members, the second would be hard to verify properly, as all submissions would need documentation. We can discuss other ways, but I think email is a good compromise. As for security, we have a 24h check in place, in case somebody messed with the emails.

I think, that all amandements and motions need to by publicly announced before or at the start of frozen week.

Why? Frozen state gives the board the appropriate time to format and send the notifications. We shouldn’t assume that this will be done at the moment when frozen week starts but give it a proper time frame, which a full week sure is. After frozen week there is a full weeks time for voting anyway.

Also voting process needst to be established at that moment.

This was meant to be established in the order of business to be created and sent by the board.

Iniciation is usually held by smaller group, than the one that is reguired for decision.
Something like >1/6 i.e. 1/10th would make sense in this case.

1/3 is addressing the right to call for a GA, so no changes there. It’s a continuation of the current rule. Also the intent was to have more member interaction and discussion before the actual submission. If we’d lower invoking right to a small group, we would create a lot more bureaucracy, would give trolls an easy to use tool to load the board with senseless work and would in no form guarantee more member interaction. I think having 1/3 of members send an email to circumvent the board is a very generous agreement.

As this is just special type of extraordinary online assembly, i see no reason to change the statutes. We have art. XI. (4), which should be IMHO sufficient for this change.

As we are going to have a panel capable to change statutes, I’d rather have it spelled out. Otherwise one could argue voting week is not included. I agree that it could be incorporated into XI. (4), but I want the words “voting week” in there, so things are clear and not up for misinterpretation.

“One Voting week should be limited by topic given by original proposal/initiative. I dont want six weeks initiated for revorking of CoA or Membership overtaken by political motion on current topics, or something.”

If we are having a special form of GA I think it’s only fair to allow every member to submit whatever they see fit and as there is a full week for voting, it’s easy to vote even on a bulk of matters. Let’s not forget, you need a 1/3 of members for invoking voting week. I highly doubt one would get these many members involved for a minor change.

If on the other hand we’Äd use it only for one specific topic, I think that renders the whole tool pretty worthless. Again this is a continuation of the current rules for a GA, not a change. If a GA is announced, everyone is free to submit motions. I want to keep that good tradition.

If we’d need to address a matter out of urgency voting week would not be very useful anyway, so I don’t see an upside their. The idea compared to a regular GA is to make decision-making more inclusive and less of a job for the board. Your suggestion would oppose that idea.