board77

<quiet SQUEEE! for September 22 Inauguration Day>

Quote:

I have a question on Question 3. People selected for the committee may not think that they will be nominated. What if they are and they want to accept? This is probably too late, but could there be an alternate, in case one of the original members has to leave or decides to accept a nomination?

Maiden I think that is a wise comment, particularly since it parallels something that I said earlier. I'm going to repeat what I said earlier, and Jn's response, in order to demonstrate how I came to the wording of this question. Then you, Maiden (and anyone else) can weigh in on whether they have any suggested alternative choices to include as an option to the compromise that Jn came up with.

Quote:

Voronwe said, " I could easily imagine someone thinking they were not interested in being mayor, but reevaluating after seeing that others believe that he or she would be a good choice.'

I can easily imagine this also, but we could have the Mayor put up the announcement one month in advance of nomination period but not formulate committee until ten days prior to the nomination period. So people have ~20 days to convince their friends to run, or seek nominations from friends, and generally decide whether they are interested. If they then accept a position on the committee, they may not run for the office.

Prim, is that a twee squee?

I'm actually thinking that it might be worth voting on having an official September 22 inaugerations day. Beyond the tweeness of it all, I see a definitely value in establishing a specific inaugeration date, rather then leaving it to the perpetual discretion of the current Mayor.

rather then leaving it to the perpetual discretion of the current Mayor.

who just might be so fed up with the office by then that they take an early powder on Lammasday ... not that I'm thinking of such a thing.

Jn

Lammasday? And here I thought you were set until the Feast of St. Bartholomew at least.

I think I would defend September 22 against any charge of tweeness. If you know the significance of the day—pot, kettle, black. If you don't, it does not scream out what it means in any other way, and it can't puzzle anyone—it's just a day we picked somehow. St. Phocas' day in fact.

St. Phocas' day in fact.

Patron saint of photographers?

Jn

Are current Rangers allowed to run for mayor?

I recommend that option A of question 7 be changed to eliminate the noted weakness. The mayor should rank the candidates before the election no matter what voting method is actually used. That is even if a poll is used, the mayor should rank all of the candidates so that I tie between any two candidates can be broken.

By the way, if 22 September isn't chosen as Inauguration Day I will quit the board in a huff.

Okay, I have made Faramond suggested change in Question 7 regarding the noted weakness (good suggestion, Faramond ). I have added an additional question about setting the inaugeration date to September 22. I did not change the order of the questions, as only Prim has indicated so far that she would like them to be changed.

I would like to begin voting today, before Prim leaves if at all possible. Please share any further comments.

I made one more small change to Question 1. Instead of saying that the announcement must be made at least 60 days before the current term of office ended, I changed it to say the announcment must be made "with sufficient time to complete the election process before the current Mayor's term is scheduled to end."

One motivating factor for this change is the fact that, by my calculations, we would need to finish voting and submit this to the Membership by the end of the day (GMT) today in order to have 60 full days after ratification and before September 22 for the honorary mayor to give notice of first election. But I also think it is a good change.

Voronwe -

I think you've got June and July mixed up. As of today, we have 86 days until Sept. 22.

In my opinion, it is a good idea to say 60 days - (perhaps you could make it a recommendation instead of a command, eg. approximately 60 days) - because I remember how carefully we had to schedule in order to make the ratifications come out right for a June opening. Most people are not sitting on an MB thinking that far in advance and I can easily imagine the necessary start date slipping by without the current Mayor or admins realizing it.

Other than that, I think we can vote on this.

And I'd like to remind the committee of one more thing about the Mayor - we need to complete Article 5, ¶7: Hearings to Remove an Elected Official before we consider the topic of the Mayor done.

Jn

Jnyusa wrote:

Voronwe -

I think you've got June and July mixed up. As of today, we have 86 days until Sept. 22.

Nope, I don't have June and July mixed up. If we were to finish voting tomorrow, it would take 86 days from then to completely finish, because of the damn two full weekends rule. That would bring us to Sept. 23. If we did it today it would only take 80 days, which would give us a few days to spare, but I really think it is unreasonable and unfair to expect everyone to vote within the next seven hours (that would be assuming that I had the ratification discussion thread all ready to go). So either we go with the change that I suggested, or we make this year a slight exception and allow only 59 days.

If my math is off, please correct me.

Aha! But we can announce the intention to the membership before actually finishing the ratification process. We can announce it at any time, basically, because the purpose of the lead time is to give people a chance to consider whether they would like to run or who they would like to nominate.

edit: actually, now that I think about it, the Ratification vote for this Article is the announcement that we'll inaugurate a new mayor on 9/22 if ratified.

Oh, shoot - there's two other things here, too.

• I would like an option to vote for a second member seconding nominations. I don't like it that someone becomes a candidate with the support of only one other person.

• And, Faramond raised the issue of whether Rangers can run for Mayor. There is no reason to exclude them, but we need a clause that says, 'if elected, they have to vacate their term of office as Ranger,' because the Mayor can't have an admin panel.

Jn

Okay, I'll change it back to 60 days (although I suppose I could make a choice between the two).

I'll add a separate question regarding seconding. Sorry I missed that. You said that way in the beginning (before the beginning, actually).

I'll add another question about Rangers being able to run but giving up their place.

Prim, if you are out there, what is the latest time today that you will be able to vote on this? Gotta go do some real work, but I'll be back to make the changes.

If a current Ranger runs they shouldn't have the current mayor's tiebreak vote PMed to him or her, for instance. Nor should he or she be involved in any Ranger tiebreaking vote.

I second Jn's suggestion that nominations for mayor must be seconded. I guess I missed this because I assumed this was going to be the policy. I also believe that members should be able to nominate or second only a single candidate.

Yes, I second both of Faramond's second comments.

Jn

I agree with Faramond.

Quote:

Maiden I think that is a wise comment, particularly since it parallels something that I said earlier. I'm going to repeat what I said earlier, and Jn's response, in order to demonstrate how I came to the wording of this question. Then you, Maiden (and anyone else) can weigh in on whether they have any suggested alternative choices to include as an option to the compromise that Jn came up with.

Ah, I wondered if this had been brought up. My apologies for being redundant. Since no one else seems to think it's an issue, I shall leave it at that.

Say six o'clock tonight, Voronwe. I'll probably be shutting things down after that. But please don't worry—I'm sure the committee can muddle through without my vote!

Before I go making changes to the ballot, I have a suggestion. It seems to me that if we are going to have a set date for the inaugeration, why not have set dates for all of the other points in the process. For instance,

On July 24, the Mayor posts a head's up announcement that the nomination period will begin in 30 days. On August 13, the committee will be convened. On August 23, the 10 day nomination period will begin, extending until September 2, when the ten day voting period will begin. The voting will be over on September 12, and the inaugeration will be ten days later.

Sounds good to me, Voronwe.

I was thinking, while running up to the convenience store to buy chocolate milk, that we have to make sure there's a window between the election results and the inauguration because it's turning out that there is more than a little stuff to be transferred to the Mayor-elect.

Jn

Oh dear - I thought of another stupid question, this time while doing the dishes ....

Should the Mayor have to be 18 years of age or older?

Is there any reason why we should wish to avoid a 13 year old Mayor? Or a 16 year old Mayor for that matter? Anything the Mayor must be able to see in the age-restricted forum?

Jn

Edit - oh screw. Yes, there is. If the Mayor is going to be designated the officer of the corporation when we form a corp, and the corp. enters into contracts with a web server, etc., the Mayor really should be 18.

Edit again - but you know what? That belongs in ¶1, as does the thing about seconding nominations.

Could we vote on those two things here, and then I'll have to move them to the consistency thread so that the members can ratify them along with other substantive changes on articles that were already ratified.