[Lnc-business] Election Buddy in tonight's test run

[Alicia Mattson]

I need to point out something important from the Election Buddy voting
software which was demonstrated during tonight's test run.

RONR p. 263 notes that it is "a fundamental principle of parliamentary law
that the right to vote is limited to the members of an organization who are
actually present at the time the vote is taken in a regular or properly
called meeting."

Yet the Election Buddy vote conducted during tonight's test sent ballots to
all delegates, not just those who were actually present in the meeting.
The shared screens weren't visible for that long for me to catch the
details, but it probably also went to the alternates in addition to the
delegates, since the one emailed to us earlier today had over 1300
recipients and not just 1046.

Obviously in a live scenario, it must be limited to only whoever was
present and eligible to vote at that time, which could be a blend of
delegates and alternates.

Again I'm going to emphasize that Convention Rule 10 requires that when
votes are submitted by delegation, the delegates must vote with written
ballots which are submitted so as to constitute an audit trail.  The
chair's instructions on these test runs for delegation chairs to collect
their votes however they wish is not compliant with our rules.  We'll have
no audit trail when it's being done 51 different ways.

Since we're being placed in webinar mode, I have no way of knowing whether
there are 2 or 30 delegates present at the meeting from any given
affiliate.  Only a delegation chair knows.  This plan makes it VERY EASY
for a theoretically naughty delegation chair (not mine - 'cause Mimi is
awesome and trustworthy!!) to stuff extra votes into the submitted tallies
without anyone noticing.

-Alicia