[dundee] Some suggested constitution amendments.

[Mark Harrigan]

On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 09:49:01PM +0100, Duncan Gauld wrote:
> The constitution looks gnerally fine to me, although some of the rules
> regarding
> committee members seem a bit over the top to me (paragraph 4.5 should
> perhaps be reviewed):
> 
> Section 4.5:
> ...The quorum for the Committee Elections shall be ten members, or 15% of
> the group's membership...
> 
> Personally I don't think things need be that complicated.
> 
> And the first sentence of 4.6 reads like double Dutch:
> 
> "The Committee shall be appointed by way of a non-stochastic Single
> Transferable Vote election."
> 
> I think 4.6 should be entirely replaced by "The Committee shall be appointed
> by election, open to all members, and votes shall be returned to the
> Committee-appointed Electoral Officer via email." The voting will still be
> the same of course, only that is easier to read.
> 
> Duncan

There are reasons behind all the complexity (trust me it's actually
very simple in practice), if we go with the simple version we risk a
committee which doesn't properly reflect the group and it's disparate
interests, for example there's the possibility that people no one
wanted could end up on the committee (not saying that about the group
now, just covering our asses for the future).

I'm a little busy at the moment but I will try and give a
layman's view of what that paragraph means. It's just been used in
Belfast LUG elections and has created a rather nice looking committee,
tis also the same system used now in Northern Ireland in recent years
and has worked well there too (the only prob is other little bits of
history screwing it all up). 

In essence it's proportional representation but you'll get a better
idea soon.

Mark

PS This may take some time as all my info on it is on my main box in
dundee and I'm ssh'ing in over 56K ;)