Popular Ratification: Version 2
Mar. 19th, 2024 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeWhen I first submitted Popular Ratification to WSFS back in 2014, one of the biggest complaints against it was that it did not give the second Business Meeting (the one held the year after the one that first passed a proposal) any way to amend the pending Constitutional amendment. So when I drafted what is now Version 1 of the new Popular Ratification, I provided for the ratification election to end 90 days before Worldcon, giving members time to draft changes to a ratified Constitutional amendment to be considered at that Worldcon at which it was ratified. But since that disenfranchised a large number of WSFS members (possibly a majority of the members of any given Worldcon), I let the WSFS members of the previous Worldcon also vote, just as as we allow them to participate in Hugo Award nominating.
The most immediate negative reaction to what is now labeled as Version 1 was that it was Bad to allow the members of the same Worldcon that gave a proposal first passage to vote. So in response to that, but to also eliminate the exclusion of a very large number of WSFS members from being able to vote at all, I composed what is now Popular Ratification Version 2 (starting on page 3 of the document.
Version 2 limits voting to only the WSFS members of the second Worldcon, and also requires that voting continue through the end of Site Selection voting (which usually ends on the third day of Worldcon). Therefore there would be both advance and at-convention voting. Members could vote by mail or in person. The results would be tallied after the close of voting and announced at the Site Selection Business Meeting, although there is no reason they couldn't be announced as soon as the convention knew them, such as in the convention newsletter or on the convention website.
Unless the members of the Business Meeting voted to suspend the rules or the Chair of the meeting permitted it, changes to Constitutional amendments ratified at a given Worldcon would not be in order because the deadline for submitting new business is 30 days before the Preliminary Business Meeting. However, people wanting to make such changes would have one option: they could submit a Constitutional amendment to modify an amendment pending ratification, with a provision that if the proposal pending ratification fails, the new motion would be automatically withdrawn. This does, however, mean that such "contingent amendments" could not be considered until after Site Selection Business. If there were a lot of contingent amendments, I think it likely that we'd see more Business Meetings going into "overtime" (meeting on the final day of the convention).
Anyway, now you have two versions of the proposal. Personally, I prefer Version 2 and only wrote Version 1 because I though that people placed a high value on being able to amendment amendments. If people think that it's more important that ratification be limited to only the second Worldcons' members, that's fine with me.
I only intend to submit one version of this proposal to this year's Business Meeting. (People who prefer alternative proposals could of course propose them as amendments by substitution.) Therefore I'd like to know which version people prefer.
The most immediate negative reaction to what is now labeled as Version 1 was that it was Bad to allow the members of the same Worldcon that gave a proposal first passage to vote. So in response to that, but to also eliminate the exclusion of a very large number of WSFS members from being able to vote at all, I composed what is now Popular Ratification Version 2 (starting on page 3 of the document.
Version 2 limits voting to only the WSFS members of the second Worldcon, and also requires that voting continue through the end of Site Selection voting (which usually ends on the third day of Worldcon). Therefore there would be both advance and at-convention voting. Members could vote by mail or in person. The results would be tallied after the close of voting and announced at the Site Selection Business Meeting, although there is no reason they couldn't be announced as soon as the convention knew them, such as in the convention newsletter or on the convention website.
Unless the members of the Business Meeting voted to suspend the rules or the Chair of the meeting permitted it, changes to Constitutional amendments ratified at a given Worldcon would not be in order because the deadline for submitting new business is 30 days before the Preliminary Business Meeting. However, people wanting to make such changes would have one option: they could submit a Constitutional amendment to modify an amendment pending ratification, with a provision that if the proposal pending ratification fails, the new motion would be automatically withdrawn. This does, however, mean that such "contingent amendments" could not be considered until after Site Selection Business. If there were a lot of contingent amendments, I think it likely that we'd see more Business Meetings going into "overtime" (meeting on the final day of the convention).
Anyway, now you have two versions of the proposal. Personally, I prefer Version 2 and only wrote Version 1 because I though that people placed a high value on being able to amendment amendments. If people think that it's more important that ratification be limited to only the second Worldcons' members, that's fine with me.
I only intend to submit one version of this proposal to this year's Business Meeting. (People who prefer alternative proposals could of course propose them as amendments by substitution.) Therefore I'd like to know which version people prefer.
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Date: 2024-03-20 09:17 pm (UTC)Tally the votes of WSFS members from Worldcon 1 and Worldcon 2 separately. (If you had a membership in each year, you could vote in each tally.) In order to be ratified, the amendment has to win both ballots.
So now, the Business Meeting at Worldcon 1 nominates the amendment to the membership. The membership of that Worldcon has to approve it. The membership of the *following* Worldcon also has to approve it.
The nice thing about this is that it allows the membership of both Worldcons to vote on the amendment, while preventing a Worldcon with a much larger number of members from drowning out the vote of the other Worldcon.