12/1 Main Meeting

I’m not big on finding and reading bylaw documents which are always a snore.

Is the quorum voting one vote per member organization? Or are all members of all organizations have a vote?


No me gusta encontrar y leer documentos de ley que siempre son un ronco.

¿El quórum vota un voto por organización miembro? ¿O todos los miembros de todas las organizaciones tienen voto?

Thanks for the feedback! Would you mind re-posting as a comment on this topic: Coop and Membership Engagement ?

I think you may have meant a different post. This one is specifically for the 12/1 meeting.

You are absolutely right - you made two posts and I answered this post with the answer I intended for the other. And you seem to have figured all of that out - so thanks :slight_smile: .

In answer to this question… I hear you about the drag of reading by-laws. I don’t make any claims to the narrative prose of our by laws but I will say that we deleted almost all of the boiler plate language our laywer sent and tried as hard as we could to write something that was reasonably friendly.

The relevant part to your question states that each organization gets two votes (no matter how many members they may have) and each individual member gets one vote.

We encourage members who are organizations to send as many people as they want to the general meeting. However, when it comes time to vote, they will still only get two votes.

As you can imagine, taking attendence and voting is no simple undertaking. We use a Riseup pad and the honor system to have people in attendance accurately report which organization or organizations they are representing.

One other thing…

I scanned the bylaws and notice that voting and attendance by proxy is allowed. One of the members of our organization is also an individual member and cannot attend 12/1 but wants to have me attend and vote as his proxy. I can have him provide a quick email from his individual member account documenting the proxy relationship and forward it. Is that sufficient, and who should get the confirmation?

I would also love to be able to vote by proxy, as I’ll be on childcare duty at the time of the meeting.

Hi all,

Voting at the offical membership meeting is based on the honor system. We’ll ask everyone to use a shared Riseup pad to enter the names of all the memberships they are authorized to vote on behalf of.

So, you can proxy for anyone who asks you to, and we will take your word for it. And Nathan - if you are looking for someone to proxy your vote, I would be happy to - or you can ask any other member.

There will be only ONE vote that is taken at the live meeting, which is: Do you authorize the organization to conduct the election of our board of directors by online voting? I know! It’s ridiculous, but New York state law says you have to elect the board at a live meeting, so we need to officially have our members say: no, that’s cool, we can do the vote via a one week online voting period.

Assuming this is approved, then we send out the link and code by email so you can vote for the board of directors, by-law changes and rank our priorities via a web site at your leisure over a one week period.

Yes, please take my proxy as yes! Looking forward to reading the minutes. Thank you for your conscientious facilitation!

Has this happened yet? I don’t see anything in my Inbox(es).

Thank you for checking in! Your ballot didn’t go out because you were behind in your dues. But that wasn’t your fault. Due to the pandemic we have not been checking our PO box regularly - I went yesterday and found and processed your check. And I just emailed your ballot. Please let me know here if you don’t get it (it went to a gmail account - be sure to check the junk mail folders if you don’t see it).