[Lnc-business] Email Ballot 2014-10: Oregon Resolution v2

Alicia Mattson agmattson at gmail.com
Mon Jul 21 04:43:34 EDT 2014


Joshua,

It's not that there's something you don't understand about email ballots.
Rather, you do understand it, and you are finding the process to be
inadequate for you to exercise all the options available to you in a
face-to-face meeting.  This is precisely why RONR says conducting business
by email is not the same as a "deliberative body" as discussed in RONR, and
it puts us into uncharted parliamentary territory.  There are a lot of
timing issues in provisions which allow people to exercise their membership
rights in RONR, and email ballots just aren't adequate to allow for that.
Things that are controversial are best handled in actual meetings where we
can amend, where points of order can be raised in a timely manner, and
where all those details can be handled before we vote on the motion.  But
this is the process we have been given.

I share some of your questions about whether this motion is in order.

If a point of order is quickly raised on an email ballot, and the chair
promptly replies to say the point is well taken and the motion is out of
order, well then we can just stop the email ballot to approximate how it
would be handled in a meeting.  Then if 4 people want to start a mail
ballot to appeal the ruling, they can do that, and if their appeal is
successful, we restart the original motion.

In this case, I strongly suspect that the Chair would not agree that the
motion is out of order.  There's no hard-coded process for how the LNC can
dispute that and be sure to finish that question before the original email
ballot ends, much less before voting starts on it.  I debated whether to
ask for a ruling on this motion, but it would be dragging us through such a
messy process, and the LNC had already once decided that a similar motion
was in order, so I decided that in this case I'd just count on people to
vote no if they think it's out of order.

As to the question about what constitutes a session when we're doing email
ballots, since we're in RONR la-la land with email ballots, the best we can
do is attempt to find guidance in parallel concepts.  It's just guidance to
attempt to do justice to the RONR concepts, but I can't argue those
parallel concepts to be binding rules.  Since a session is the duration of
a single adopted agenda, and we don't adopt agendas for the time in between
our face-to-face sessions, my opinion would be that we could view each
email ballot as its own session, an agenda of one single item.

For those who aren't necessarily versed in the implications of a session,
Joshua's point is that once a motion is defeated, it cannot be renewed
(offered again for a vote on the same question) for the duration of that
session (agenda) except through a motion to reconsider.  It could be
brought up again in the next session on a newly adopted agenda if the board
agreed to put it on the agenda again.

If each email ballot is viewed as its own session, it means that even if
Dan's motion were viewed as substantially the same question, he could still
introduce the motion in a separate email ballot after the first one
failed.  The fact that some who voted no on the first motion are now
sponsoring the second motion argues that they see it as a substantially
different question, though.

Viewing each email ballot as its own session also means that in theory, a
group of co-sponsors could repeatedly bring up the exact same verbatim
question over and over again by back-to-back email ballots, hoping for an
eventual different result.  That's in theory.  In reality, though, that is
not likely to be an effective tactic.  It would just make the rest of the
board really annoyed and instead result in an increasing number of no votes
to express the annoyance.  Eventually the chair would likely say it's
dilatory and rule the subsequent motions out of order, and the LNC would
thank him for doing that and back him up if there were an appeal about it.

-Alicia




On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Joshua Katz <joshua.katz at lp.org> wrote:

> I rise (sit) in opposition to this motion.  With the previous motion
> having been pretty decisively voted on, I think it's unnecessary to
> continue wordsmithing, I don't think you'll ever get agreement, and that
> continuing to press the issue will continue to take up this board's time.
>  Can we at least agree that if this one fails, we're done?
>
> (This raises another question I don't understand about email ballots.
>  While this is not clearly out of order, what if 4 people cosponsored an
> email ballot that was clearly out of order?  How could a point of order be
> raised?  I question whether or not this is bringing substantially the same
> business before the body - but, what is a session when it comes to email
> ballots?  If we did prohibit bringing the same question before the body,
> would that mean for 2 years, until any member has changed, until an actual
> meeting has passed, for 3 months, or what?)
>
> Now, as to why I find this more problematic than the previous one
> presented:  First, the whereas clause that quotes from Robert's the
> prohibition on changing a decision of the convention suggests, to me at
> least, that passing this resolution is akin to making the statement that,
> if we could, we would reverse that decision.  I do not recall the vote
> totals, but many balloted votes were close - it's at least possible that
> reversing that decision would have actual implications on the make-up of
> the LNC.  And that wouldn't be fair for many reasons, not least because the
> three seated delegates could have been seated elsewhere, so throwing out
> their votes would discount this strong likelihood.  Anyway, even if RONR
> said nothing on the subject, I would oppose reversing the decision, and I
> see the inclusion of this phrase as suggesting otherwise.
>
> My second objection is that this motion, before saying that some delegates
> feel the wrong decision was reached, mentions the vote on the appeal.  The
> motion by the Chair did not do so, and so did not challenge a decision of
> the body, but only that of the ex-Chair.  This one directly points to an
> action of the body.
>
> I recognize that in many ways, this motion weakens the previous one, and
> may be able to gain broader support.  It says less and does less, and so
> may be less objectionable.  I recognize that it is an attempt to offer an
> olive branch, and to gain broader consensus on doing so.  I appreciate the
> effort taken in trying to make something happen on this issue.  I just
> think that this body has already made a decision.  Further, if we continue
> to make efforts to bring about an apology that was voted down, I do begin
> to wonder if we are doing what we think is right, or if we are, in fact,
> responding to blackmail.
>
>
>
> Joshua A. Katz
>
> Region 8 (Region of Badassdom) Alternate
> Libertarian National Committee
>
> Chair, Libertarian Party of Connecticut
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 2:35 AM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> We have an electronic mail ballot.
>>
>> *Votes are due to the LNC-Business list by July 29, 2014 at 11:59:59pm
>> Pacific time.*
>>
>> *Co-Sponsors:*  Dan Wiener, Vicki Kirkland, Tim Hagan, Guy McLendon
>>
>> *Motion:*
>> Whereas, the Bylaws of the Libertarian Party state that “delegates to a
>> Regular Convention shall be selected by a method adopted by each affiliate
>> party” (Article 11, 3 (b)), and
>>
>> Whereas, the Bylaws of the Libertarian Party state that “each state-level
>> affiliate party shall, in accordance with its own Bylaws and these Bylaws,
>> determine who shall be its delegates to all Regular Conventions.” (Article
>> 6, 3), and
>>
>> Whereas, the Bylaws of the Libertarian Party state that “the autonomy of
>> the affiliate and sub-affiliate parties shall not be abridged by the
>> National Committee or any other committee of the Party…” (Article 6, 5), and
>>
>> Whereas, a dispute over the Oregon delegation was placed before the
>> Credentials Committee, which subsequently presented a report to the
>> Libertarian Party National Convention on June 27, 2014 which did not
>> describe the details of that dispute, and
>>
>> Whereas, a motion was made to amend the Credentials Committee report to
>> include three individuals as delegates within the Oregon delegation, and
>>
>> Whereas, in response to a Point of Order the Chair of the National
>> Convention ruled that the proposed amendment was in order, the Chair’s
>> ruling was appealed, the Chair’s ruling was sustained by a vote of the
>> assembly, and the assembly subsequently approved the amendment, and
>>
>> Whereas, the 11th edition of Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised, which
>> is the Parliamentary Authority for the Libertarian Party as stated in
>> Article 16 of its Bylaws, states (p. 483) that “In any event, no action of
>> the board can alter or conflict with any decision made by the assembly of
>> the society, and any such action of the board is null and void (see p. 577,
>> II. 23-33).”, and
>>
>> Whereas, the Libertarian National Committee nevertheless regrets the
>> situation wherein some delegates believe the above decision was incorrectly
>> decided, therefore
>>
>> Be it resolved that it is the sense of the Libertarian National Committee
>> that it wishes to convey those regrets to the Libertarian Party of Oregon.
>>
>>
>> Alicia Mattson
>> LNC Secretary
>>
>>
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>>
>
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