Tim, <<snipped>> If I was involved in this I apologise for not being my more usual pernickety self. <<snipped>> I like pernickety where rules are concerned! Re your proposals: "1. Specify what the vote should consist of. No powers of carte blanche are to be allowed." Seems reasonable. Arguably if you give carte blanche, then you personally deserve everything you get but that's a touch unhelpful for others. "2. Not give more than two proxy votes to any one nominee." I don't think you gain anything from this. If you've tied the nominee down, I don't think it matters whether they have 2 proxy votes to wield or 102. Unless you imagine anyone is likely to be swayed by "My proxy votes are bigger than your proxy votes" arguments, and I'd hope we weren't. "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." I think the first sentence just repeats 1, doesn't it? Unless I'm missing something? And the second sentence is not required if we discard 2. Adrian B

On 1 Jul at 12:02, Adrian Bruce <[email protected]> wrote: > Tim, <snip> Re your proposals: > > "1. Specify what the vote should consist of. No powers of carte > blanche are to be allowed." Seems reasonable. Arguably if you give > carte blanche, then you personally deserve everything you get but > that's a touch unhelpful for others. It is debatable whether carte blanche should be allowed. Certainly block voting, where blocks are more than three voles, should not be allowed as it is undemocratic when all members are equal. > "2. Not give more than two proxy votes to any one nominee." I don't > think you gain anything from this. If you've tied the nominee down, I > don't think it matters whether they have 2 proxy votes to wield or > 102. Unless you imagine anyone is likely to be swayed by "My proxy > votes are bigger than your proxy votes" arguments, and I'd hope we > weren't. I agree that this was confusing. The point I was trying to cover was where we did allow a measure of carte blanche proxy voting and therefore wished to limited those proxy votes to two plus the members themselves. > "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." I think the first sentence just repeats 1, doesn't > it? Unless I'm missing something? And the second sentence is not > required if we discard 2. Again this only deals with the problems of controlling carte blanche proxy voting. I trust I am not revealing anything but one member was informed at the last minute that he had two votes. He did not know who he was voting for and would have liked to have known and what their preferences were. So the questions really are whether: (a) We allow Proxy Voting at all, (b) We allow any proxies to be carte blanche. Personally I think we ought to allow (a) to cover the lame, the halt and the weak, etc. I would also prefer that we did not allow (b) but if it was to be allowed, it should be controlled to forbid the insidious evil of block voting. -- Tim Powys-Lybbe [email protected] for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/