APPROVED TEXT
This text is in addition to what was already approved when we voted on the committee that would handle charter amendments, shown below.
Committee Procedure
The committee will convene in the Jury Room for deciding whether the Charter should be amended and for drafting the amendment. The committee itself will vote on elements of the amendment before presenting a final form to the membership for ratification.
The membership will be given ten full days to discuss the amendment. During that period, anything deemed controversial may be removed and tabled for later consideration, or the amendment may be withdrawn. Following the discussion a yes/no poll will be posted in the thread and members will vote for ten full days whether or not to ratify the amendment.
A Global email will be sent to all registered member at the start of the discussion and at the start of the vote.
Quorum and Majority Requirements
In order for a ratification vote to be valid, sufficient votes must be cast to reach a quorum, defined as follows:
• Records will be maintained for the proportion of members who voted in the last seven elections that required a quorum.
• ‘Proportion of members who voted’ will be calculated as the number of votes cast divided by the number of members active over the sixty days prior to the vote.
• A moving average of those last seven proportions will be calculated, converted to a percentage, and 5% will be deducted to account for variation.
• The resulting percent will be multiplied by the number of members active during the sixty days prior to the posting of the ratification thread, and that will be the number of votes required for a quorum.
Records necessary for calculating a quorum will be maintained by the Mayor and posted in Michel Delving where the members can see them.
The number of votes that must be cast to reach a quorum will be posted in the ratification thread.
If the vote has not attained a quorum at the end of the voting period, voting may be extended for an additional seven days. If, at the end of the extension period, a quorum has still not been obtained the proposition will be considered defeated.
In order for an Amendment to be ratified, 67% of those voting must approve. This provision will be posted in the ratification thread.
If the quorum as calculated from a moving average falls below 20%, the Committee for Amendments to the Charter will convene to reconsider our participation requirements.
Archiving the Voting Results
When voting has concluded (or the amendment has been withdrawn), the threads used by the committee in the Jury Room and the ratification thread in the Business Room will be archived in the forum entitled “Threads of Historical Interestâ€. A Directory thread will be created and links to all individual threads related to Charter Amendments will be posted there, preferably in chronological order, so that it will be easy for members to find and review them.
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TEXT APPROVED UNDER ARTICLE 11, MOVED HERE
(first and last paragraph also appear in Article 11)
The committee to Amend the Charter will convene under two circumstances:
• A Ranger has exercised Extraordinary powers requiring review in accordance with Article 3, ¶5. The committee will decide whether the circumstance is anticipated to occur again with sufficient frequency to justify an Amendment to the Charter;
• An Initiative to amend the Charter is brought by the Mayor, or by two current Rangers, or by five members regardless of their status.
Composition of the Committee
The committee will have an odd number of members, no fewer than seven, no more than thirteen. The Mayor and one Loremaster will be voting members of this committee. The composition of the rest of the committee will be as follows:
If the committee was convened after the exercise of Extraordinary powers by a Ranger, it will also include:
• the current Ranger who was involved in the incident and one other current Ranger;
• one former Ranger;
• a minimum of two volunteers from among the rest of the membership.
If the committee was convened by an initiative of the Mayor or two current Rangers, it will also include:
• the two current Rangers who brought the initiative;
• one former Ranger;
• a minimum of two volunteers from among the rest of the membership.
If the committee was convened by an initiative of the members, it will also include:
• one current Ranger;
• one former Ranger;
• a minimum of three volunteers from among the membership, one of whom will be a member who brought the initiative;
• and if five or more volunteers are accepted from among the membership, two of them will be members who brought the initiative.
The Committee will be convened by posting a sticky thread in the Business Forum and accepting volunteers in order until the committee is filled and composed as required. Any registered member may serve on the committee.
Committee Procedure
The committee will convene in the Jury Room for deciding whether the Charter should be amended and for drafting the amendment. The committee itself will vote on elements of the amendment before presenting a final form to the membership for ratification.
The ratification procedure and the archiving of committee threads, ratification thread, and committee ballots with voting results must be completed in accordance with Article 12, ¶2.
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Original Post:
Article 12, ¶2. The Final Frontier.
This is the very last paragraph we will have to write for the Charter folks. It would be nice if we could discuss it together with Thread Deletions and Statutes of Limitations and vote on them simulataneously.
Then, approving the long list of minor corrections is the last thing we have to do.
The issue here is the definition of a quorum and the supermajority required for a win.
Since we are voting tomorrow on the definition of a quorum for Binding Votes, we might want simply to import the same definition into this article. That would be the quick and easy way to do it.
We might want a stricter requirements for both the quorum and the required majority where charter amendments are concerned.
I leave it up to you.
Jn