A special election needs to be held to fill the unexpired terms of Steve Van Loon (vanloons) and David Cahill (dpc), both of whom have resigned from the Grex board of directors. The terms will run through December 2006. Use this item to place names in nomination. Self-nominations are allowed. The same eligibility requirements apply as in a regular board election: By the time the election begins, you must be a member in good standing who has paid at least three months membership dues. I've recommended to the board that nominations be open for two weeks, followed immediately by an online election over a period of 15 days, the same length as a regular election.118 responses total.
i agree with shutting grex down forever!
Remmers, could you please list both current board members and former board members who cannot be reelected this year, so we will know who is left to nominate? If there are not enough people willing to run, could the bylaws be changed to allow reelecting someone who has been out of office for a shorter period than usually required?
i agree with triluda !
The current Directors are listed at
http://www.cyberspace.org/local/grex/bod.html
which also has the list of those who have served before, including their dates
of service. The Directors are aruba, slynne, gelinas, bhoward and polygon.
Those ineligible for election are vanloons, dpc and mary. mooncat has been
out of office for one year and so is eligible for election.
I would hope some of those who refused a two-year term next month will
consider standing for these one-year terms.
I nominate jadecat and remmers and scott and janc.
I would like to renominate Mike Mcnally. His earlier objections not withstanding, I think he would make an excellent member of the board.
i nominate sindiiii kesan.
re #4, above: %s/next month/last month/
I think everyone nominated so far would do a good job and I would be priveledged to serve on the board with any of them. Seriously. They are all folks whose opinions I respect.
I accept Sindi's recommendation. I haven't been terribly active on Grex lately, but I'd like to change that. My kids are big enough so that even board meetings wouldn't be any real problem anymore.
That's great!
How old are the kids now?
Re #12: At a shell prompt, type "finger arlo kendra" to find out ...
Wow, Janc. That is awesome
Arlo is seven, Kendra will be four in three months.
Oh, how time flies!
I think I'm going to have to decline the nomination this time around. But thanks. :)
I nominate steve, keesan, and rcurl.
All good choices. I nominate you, kingjon
I nominate janc
remove the ribbon
Re #19: I decline. If I had chosen EMU or Concordia as my college I would accept, but I'm a student at Calvin, which is in Grand Rapids -- too far a distance. I also nominate srw.
I accept my nomination.
Yay!
I decline, I think remmers and janc would do a much better job. I will nominate myself if we ever finish building the house we started in 1986.
I can relate!
Dang. 20 years? Are you growing your own trees for the wood you need?
Hey, there are buildings that took 20 years to build. Egyptian pyramids come to mind.
Monticello took a lot longer. We are spending too much time on the design, and we also started by digging a hole which then caved in, and building the foundation of recycled blocks including some from the old county building, and as much recycled wood as people were throwing out near us, and the goal is to heat with electricity for $100/year (or maybe with stored potatoes and apples). We have visited people in newer houses than this one.
A man's home is his castle..and in some cases a few of us actually have a castle. You don't DIY overnight.
Aquinas is better... ;-)
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I outta take this microphone and beat ya over the head with it, cuz that's
what you deserve. That's what you deserve!!
-- Charles Manson to the judge at his sentencing
"Puppycow Appleshoe." ---Koo Koo
Did the Board set dates for the election?
The board decided to start the election on Monday the 23rd. Sorry that hasn't been posted in coop before now.
Okay. I guess nominations and opportunities for acceptance end at midnight tonight (Sunday) then. I'll open the voting as early as practical on Monday, when I know the complete list of candidates. I presume that plan is to keep the polls open for 15 days, the same as in a regular election. If nobody else accepts a nomination, it looks like this will be another non-competitive election -- 2 candidates, 2 slots. I seem to be in the position of both administering the election and being a candidate. This has happened before, and the way that it was handled was to have a second person count the votes. It's kind of moot if there's no competition, but still it would be nice if another staff member who's not a candidate handles the election after I've done the initial setup. There's not much to "handling it" - poll opening and closing is now automated, so about the only thing the administrator has to do is tally the results when the election is over. It's pretty simple to do via a script. Any volunteers?
I'll count the votes.
how's your sperm count ?
i have seven!
I have many, many spermatazoa because my testicles are huge.
Re #38: Thanks, Mic. I'll be in touch via email regarding procedures. The polls are open, now through February 6. It's a non-competitive election, but you should vote anyway. Type 'vote' at a Unix shell prompt, '!vote' at most other prompts, or vote on the web at https://grex.org/cgi-bin/pw/voting-booth .
I read Jan's statement (Remmer's did not provide one yet) and wonder why there is mention of setting up the Sun but nothing about all his hard work getting the current grex hardware running. Remmers did a lot of work on current grex too, and it is really generous of them to also agree to run for board.
Jan's statement is from the last time he ran for the board, which was a while ago.
re41: oh, did they finally descend? congrats!
I've emailed Jan suggesting that he update his statement. And I'll provide one of my own.
john remmers doesn't have a voting statement :(
Amd isn't there usually a time period between the closing of nominations and the opening of the voting, to allow the people who haven't seen their nomination to be contacted and asked to accept or decline?
Yes, there normally is such a period. Since this is a special election, and there had already been a long nomination period, the board decided to start the election a week after our meeting (which was Monday the 16th.)
I just tried voting and could not seem to vote for John,,?
I have updated my statement. I also put a date on it, so that people will know it is old the next time I run. This happens every time. Sure has been a long time since I last ran. Hmmm...didn't get John's reminder email. Apparantly neither did John, since he still seems statementless. Well, I'll say that he has been active with Grex since it began, longer than I have. He's one of the original founders. He is currently the most active staff member, the one person most likely to reboot Grex when it needs rebooting. He'll respect Grex's traditions, and yet be open to new ideas. Vote for John!
Counting has finished in the Grex board election to fill the two
positions made available by two resigning board members. The tally
of votes was:
Members (17 voted of 60 eligible): 15 janc, 15 remmers
Non-Members (24 voted): 19 janc, 13 remmers
Of note, only the member votes count in this election, of course.
Since there were two positions available and only two candidates
ran for the election, the uncontested result is that both janc and
remmers are elected to the Grex BoD. Congrats nevertheless to Jan
and John! They will both do a fine job.
Thanks to all people who cast their vote!
Thanks.
You're welcome!
thanks tod !
THanks soup!
Who did the other two voting members vote for? Is there a place on the ballot to write in names, that I did not notice?
It is possible to vote for no candidates. You may vote for *at most* as many candidates as there are open seats; it is possible to vote for fewer.
So either two people voted for nobody, or four people each voted for only one person, or .... Odd.
Yep, many people vote for n positions - where n is the number of available positions, in this case 2.
I may have been one of the people voting for only one, for some reason in telenet I could only vote for one, using putty, I could only vote for the other (and probably erased my vote for the first one) don't know why, something about how my computer is set up I guess,,,,,
Only 28% of eligible voters voted, which could lend credence to the argument that quorum requirements ought to be reinstated. How few a number of votes is too few? Would it be okay if only one or five people voted and a board member was elected? I wonder if Grex's 501(3)(c) could be affected it if does not have reasonable minimum quorum requirements? Should Grex declare an election void if too few voters vote and schedule another election?
I'm just taking a wild guess here but my suspicion is that only 28% of voters voted because the election results were a foregone conclusion.
From memory - I think you can only vote for 1 person at a time. But, I would have to look at the software to confirm this (remmers would know this for sure).
re #62 if there are only two people running for two open seats, can the board not declare that the election is unnecessary and vote to simply name them to the board?
No. Because if (hypothetical if) nobody votes for one of the two candidates, then technically he can not take the position. No?
I agree that a certain percentage of voters ought to vote in order to make an election valid - maybe 50%?
The bylaws originally had such a quorum requirement, but it was removed by a member vote.
re #66 yeah but one can assume that Jan and Remmers can and would have elected themselves, simply by casting their own ballots. No other votes were thus necessary.
Suppose the quorum requirement were in place, and so this most recent election were declared invalid, so the candidates were not elected. I suppose that the result would be a new election, and an aggressive campaign to get more people to vote even though the positions are not contested and so the vote doesn't particularly matter. Would that be a good thing? Why?
Re 69: True, thus demonstrating the hypothetical nature. An election has to be held so that at least one person votes for either of the two.
re #70 sure it would be a good thing because it would have allowed more time to encourage others to run. Grex should not want to have an election where there are not more candidates than seats to be filled. Grex should want voters to have a choice, which they did not have here.
Or maybe just an amendment that states that if the nominating period closes and there are not more nominees than there are open seats, that the nominating process shall be automatically extended. That henceforth grex will not hold uncontested elections.
How about a way for people to vote AGAINST some candidate, and they can't win if they have more votes against than for them? Then total jerks could not win an election where there were no more candidates than openings.
So you'll end up with a perennial candidate who runs on a platform of "don't vote for me, I'm only here to make the election legitimate."
"If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve."
- William Tecumseh Sherman
You can't have an election determined by proclamation, since that would prevent the opportunity for write-in candidates.
Re #72: There were more than two nominees; I suspect that they hadn't seen their nominations in the item. I think we need to make sure that henceforward there's the time period after the close of nominations but before the election starts for the nominees to be notified.
re #78: I was one of the additional nominees and I can assure you, I saw my nomination. However, I had just declined another nomination only a few weeks before and saw no need to issue a second refusal.
A) You can't force people to accept a nomination. B) You can't force people to run. C) You can't force people to vote. Given these facts, there is no reason to implement a policy that prevents the organization from functioning for those who actually do wish to participate. If people want contests, then they should run. Richard, if you want competition for board positions, then you should take it upon yourself to run and create that competition. If you can't even be bothered to do that, why should anyone pay attention to your complaint about the lack of choice? Also, given a policy that does not require a quorum, the logical assumptions are that if you don't bother to vote, then you don't care what the outcome is, and if you don't like the nominated choices in the election, you will run for the position yourself. Again, given this basic logic, if you actually care (instead of just liking to bitch about things and not do anything to change them -- in which case fuck you) but aren't willing to do anything, why should anyone else care what you say or think?
Other, your "logical assumptions" are wrong. Why would one logically run for an office when one lives a thousand miles away and has no conceivable way of ever attending a board meeting in person? That doesn't mean that one can't care about the process, and the legitimacy of the process. I ask again, how few is too few? If only remmers and jan voted in this election, and elected themselves, is that tantamount to a mandate from grex's membership that they be on the board? Why were the quorum requirements rescinded in the first place? Was the board too lazy to do mass mailings and push members to vote? It wouldn't be so hard to get the extra ten votes needed to get over forty percent would it, if the board was working toward that goal. I think the quorum requirements were restricted because the board had no interest in pushing its own members to be active in the organization. So lets eliminate quorum rules altogether, so the FEW can guarantee elections without needing the MANY. I ask again, HOW FEW IS TOO FEW?
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/060204/482/xsr20302040051
I suggest a sliding quorum requirement. For the initial election, make the quorum 40%, if a second election is needed, reduce quorum to thirty five percent, if a third, thirty percent. You'd still get to the point where an election could take place with less than a quarter turnout, but not right away and not easily.
I think the fact that people actually put forward themseleves to run is admirable and wins some votes - not to say that either candidate is not worthy of their board election victory, nor that they won't do a great job.
re #81: > Why would one logically run for an office when one lives a thousand > miles away and has no conceivable way of ever attending a board meeting > in person? I'll admit that distance was a factor that led me to refuse nomination but bhoward finds the time to volunteer on the board and attends meetings via videoconference from Tokyo.
Richard, I think you take grex way too seriously.
I have nothing to say, but I am posting anyway, because I think the subject under discussion is every bit as important as voting in an uncontested election. I call for all Grexers to stand firm in the preservation of that greatest of all Grex traditions, pointless activity.
Hear, hear!
Grex Error Alerts have been raised to color code chartreuse..
... and downgraded again to mauve.
#87 jan, you'd call quorums pointless until grex is taken over by a fringe element that gets its people elected to the board with half a dozen votes because there is no quorum and nobody cares. Radicals get elected in societies with no quorums.
We've just elected a couple of radicals here! Heh. If Jan Wolter and John Remmers are the kinds of people we are electing to the Board, I have a very hard time being concerned about the manner in which they were selected. I am completely failing to come up with any ambition to support making a change.
just because the results now are acceptable doesn't mean they will always be, someday some twit is going to get elected to grex's board with eight votes.
/eg
If the Grex Board gets overrun by ninnies, then we'll all find something else to do with our time beside spending it on Grex.
if
re #91, 93: In other words, your nobleminded proposals are really intended to alter the system to ensure that a majority of voters never elects candidates who are unacceptable to you?
The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few...
or the one.
My theory is that a twit is more likely to get elected to the Grex board due to a lack of candidates, rather than a lack of voters. So, perhaps to combat this threat, every Grex member should be required to run in, say, every third board election. (*coff*)
That would sure boost our membership =)
I think its funny that we're so concerned about "twits" becoming board members.
If they can nominate themselves and be seconded by one member, it could happen some day. How about a rule by which anyone nominated by 10 members is forced to run for the board? I nominate krj.
re #100 That's not nice.
re #103- I don't think that would work. How can you force someone to serve on the Board?
I wonder if forcing people to serve on the board violates any state corporation laws.
or possibly the 13th amendment.
Huh?
That was a joke.
boy dat lol
I think that if a person who many people thought was a twit was running for the board then (a) other candidates would appear, and (b) more people would take the trouble to vote. Richard seems to assume that voter apathy would be uneffected by the kind of imaginary circumstances that he thinks would cause it to be a problem. Honestly, it's hard to image two less controversial board candidates than John and I.
We could change that...
Maybe we should auto-nominate the most twit-like person on Grex in each future board election, ensuring that all elections are contested by candidates who want to prevent the twit's election.
But what if one *won*?
Maybe turnout would improve in the next election?
re #114 Haven't they?
I protest!
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
You have several choices: