Tom, I am with you 100%. I also think that a nominee should have been a SoG member for at least three years and served on at least two sub-committees during that time before becoming a Trustee. Jeanne Bunting On 30 Jun 2011, at 12:22, Tim Powys-Lybbe <[email protected]> wrote: > We had a very interesting constitutional anomaly appear at the AGM this > week. > > Apparently two years ago the trustees had debated and approved a change > to our constitution that allows members to give anyone, normally the > Chairman of Trustees, the right to vote on their behalf at an AGM. (If > I was involved in this I apologise for not being my more usual > pernickety self.) > > Further the proxy power did not require the members to state what vote > they wished their nominee to exercise. So this meant that the nominee > had towards two hundred votes which they could use for whatever purpose > they wished and apparently did. This is nothing other that the old > fashioned block votes at political conferences where vast number of > votes could be assigned to any motion that the nominee supported. > > Interestingly it appears that the current public legislation for proxy > voting at elections is that no nominee may exercise this for any more > than two people, hardly a block vote. > > My view is firmly that this clause in our constitution is undemocratic > and that it gives unwarranted power to the nominee to completely > overturn the views of those actually attending and voting at the AGM, as > seems to have happened on this occasion, though we were not given the > details. > > I would propose that we veto this practice. Perhaps we may have to > allow some form of proxy voting for those too ill to attend, etc. But > the proxy voting must: > > 1. Specify what the vote should consist of. No powers of carte blanche > are to be allowed. > > 2. Not give more than two proxy votes to any one nominee. > > 3. Be specifically authorised in advance requesting particular nominees > to vote for particular motions in a particular way. Preferably the > nominee and the requestor should get together beforehand to ensure that > no nominee is even asked to vote for more than two people. > > If there is a motion put to the next AGM on this matter, I would also > propose that it be put as near to the top of the agenda as possible to > prevent any further undemocratic proxy votes being made beforehand. > > Any views anyone? > > -- > Tim Powys-Lybbe [email protected] > for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/ > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

> From: Jeanne Bunting > Sent: 30 June 2011 14:02 > > I am with you 100%. I also think that a nominee should have been a SoG > member for at least three years and served on at least two sub- > committees during that time before becoming a Trustee. I think this would be very bad for democracy. The sub-committees are appointed by the Trustees, so this would effectively mean that the Trustees have control over who is eligible to succeed them. It would be a system where a self-selecting clique could easily prevent anyone they didn't like from becoming a Trustee. A length of membership criterion is probably useful, but requiring a candidate to have been previously selected by the Trustees is not. Andrew -- Andrew Millard - [email protected] Bodimeade genealogy:   http://www.one-name.org/homepages/bodimeade/ My family history:     http://www.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/ GenUKI Middx + London: http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/genuki/MDX/ + ../LND/