Members with more than one vote

Oct 20 04:14 UTC 1996

I would like to discuss the question of whether individual members 
should be limited to one vote in Grex elections. It is my opinion that a
 single individual should not be able to vote more than once, even if 
that person buys two memberships. In fact I think it should not be 
possible for an individual to have two memberships. This may be spelled 
out by either State Law, or our bylaws, but I am not sure. To me this is
 a basic principle (1 person-1 vote) that I believe Grex adheres to, but
 I am not sure of the details.

A related question is whether an organization can have a membership in 
Grex, or only individuals. I do not remember us ever establishing a 
policy on this question, but we may have done so. I am hoping that 
someone can shed light on this. I do not believe we have a second type 
of membership for organizations. I think this means that organizations 
cannot really become members, only individuals, but again I do not know 
if this is established.

These two issues could be related. If a person had an individual 
membership, but also exerted some control over an organization that was 
also a member of Grex, then if both could vote, this person would have 
more control over Grex's policies and directors than anyone else on 
Grex. This would violate the 1 person-1 vote principle, that I believe 
Grex adheres to.

Perhaps this is all a non-issue, but I need to understand why.

response 2 of 186:

Oct 20 15:05 UTC 1996

I'm fond of the one vote per member and one member per 
person philosophy.  Very fair to all.  Money shouldn't
buy additional votes in a co-operatively run organization.

I'd also like to see Grex be helpful to other organizations
but without bending or altering our basic rules of governance.
So other groups would be encouraged to use Grex but not with
special privileges.  If groups had voting rights there would
most certainly be cases where a proxy would be given to 
the person most in-touch with the organization and this person
could or would be voting as an individual member.  We'd
be allowing multiple votes by one person.  Bad policy.  Bad
precedent.

response 4 of 186:

Oct 20 22:29 UTC 1996

Of course, someone in a group could get a membership, and then decide how it
voted in some way as a group, and we'd never know.  Big deal.  However, we'd
need some one person who vouched for the membership.