Report from the Grand Council: April, 1998

To the Directors, Greetings.

The Council is completing the final draft of the Board Election Proposal, and expects to send it on separately in a week or less. A summary of the proposal, answers to likely questions about the proposal, and an estimate of ballot costs follow.

1. Items Requiring Board Action

Please let us know if you have further questions, suggested revisions or concerns regarding the election proposal. If not, we suggest that the proposal and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) be posted for comment on the Board website and be available by request from Milpitas, and the proposal and/or its summary be published as widely possible for comment.

2. Detailed Status Report: Other Work Done by Council:

Election Proposal

Summary of Election Proposal

All persons holding SCA membership could vote to chose directors by postal ballot. Any adult member that met the requirements for director and obtained fifty member signatures could run. No director could serve for more than six years out of any nine.

Directors would serve for three year terms. One election would be held each year, with three directors elected in the first year of the cycle and two in each of the following two years. Election results would be certified in June, and new directors would take office at the end of the last Board meeting of the year. In the interim they would receive Board material and could attend any meetings of the Board, but could not vote.

If a director is unable to complete their term, the Board would appoint an interim director to complete the term. Directors could be removed by a majority vote of the other directors, 2/3 vote of all Society kings, queens, and kingdom seneschals, or petition signed by 1,000 members, with no more than 400 from any one kingdom counted towards satisfying that total.

3. Summary

The Grand Council (GC) submitted a proposal on direct election of the Board of Directors.

Respectfully submitted

Will McLean (Galleron de Cressy)
29 Sam Hill Rd, Malvern, PA 19355
(610) 827-1360 mclean1382@aol.com
Secretary, GC.

Appendix I: Frequently Asked Questions about the Election Proposal

Why this proposal?

For some time, some members of the Society have expressed a desire for a Board of Directors that was chosen by and directly accountable to the membership. The Board asked the Grand Council (GC), an advisory committee to the Board, to report on what would be involved *if* the Board was elected directly by the membership. This report attempts to answer that question. Currently, this is *only* a proposal. What happens next is up to the Board and the Society.

Why can only members vote?

We needed a simple, verifiable definition of what an elector was. While we respect the value and role of all the participants who are not formal members of the Society, we didn't see a reasonably practical way to hold elections in which the suffrage was not limited to the formal membership.

Could members that were minors vote?

Yes. Many minor members have been part of the Society for years and feel that they deserve a voice in its governance. In any case, restricting suffrage to adults would be a verification nightmare

Why can only members run?

It has been policy for many years than only members can be Directors, or indeed serve as any sort of Society officer. Not everybody in the Society, or everyone on the GC, agrees with this. The Council, however, felt that shifting to a directly elected Board was quite controversial enough without involving another controversial issue at the same time.

Why term limits?

Many organizations have similar limits to insure that directors that have served for a while take a break to refresh themselves before they burn out or become ineffective. Usually, when this does happen, by the time the electorate notices there is a problem a fair amount of harm has already been done. We believe that with current workload, the term limits proposed are comfortably in excess of the continuous term that any sensible director would want to serve.

Were other methods of getting on the ballot considered?

Yes. The Council was in broad agreement that anyone that gathered sufficient signatures should get on the ballot, but debated whether there should be additional methods as well. The possibility of anyone meeting objective experience qualifications getting on the ballot was considered and rejected: it was felt that it was impossible to devise useful, practical and purely objective requirements.

The Council was also considered a nominating committee as an additional route onto the ballot. It was very evenly divided on whether a nominating committee was a good or bad idea, with some members strongly opposed, some strongly in favor, and no consensus either way. A detailed nominating committee variant was discussed under which each kingdom could appoint a member of the committee by any method favored by kingdom consensus, and the Board could appoint sufficient members to bring the number up to twelve if the committee fell below that number. A committee appointed by the Board had significant but lesser support. It was agreed that the ballot should not distinguish between candidates based on nomination method.

Those opposed to any sort of nominating committee felt that it would add complication and advantage candidates preferred by an entrenched Society establishment. Without an official committee, groups of people on any level could still seek out good candidates and gather petitions for them.

Those in favor felt that pure nomination by petition would tend to advantage charismatic candidates from large kingdoms, groups or households, would tend to select only those with a burning desire to be on the board, and might fail to produce enough candidates to fill the slate. Nomination by petition would probably result in a fair amount of petition signing at events, which might annoy some people: a nominating committee might reduce that. A nominating committee might produce a slate with better geographic balance, and could advise the Board in selecting interim directors.

Why aren't interim directors elected?

The length of time required for the electoral process would almost always prevent replacing a director who leaves office early by election before that term would expire. The few exceptions to this did not seem to justify the additional complications that elected interim directors would require.

Under the proposal, why can kings, queens and kingdom seneschals remove directors by 2/3 vote?

There was a desire for a straightforward mechanism by which directors that aroused truly widespread and massive dissatisfaction throughout the Society could be removed. Some members of the Council were concerned about giving unelected officers, most of them primarily responsible for the medieval recreation of the Society rather than mundane governance, the power to remove the elected directors that oversee them, and felt strongly enough on this issue to submit a minority report. The majority, however, felt that the group was sufficiently diverse, and the degree of agreement required great enough, that the mechanism was unlikely to be abused.

The proposal would allow 1000 members to recall a director by petition. Isn't that a pretty small number?

Historically, the percentage of Society members that can be organized to sign petitions has been fairly small, and the social and organizational obstacles to collecting signatures for this purpose are significant. Even during the controversy of 1994, the largest petition drive in Society history had difficulty approaching 1000 signatures. The proposal also requires that no more than 400 of the total can be satisfied from any one kingdom, and sets a time limit for the process.

How much would it cost to print and distribute ballots? Wouldn't it be cheaper to put the ballots in the Newsletters?

Initial estimates are that it might cost $.80 to $1.20 per member to print and mail ballots, depending on the number of candidates and whether the ballots must be sent by first class mail. Unfortunately, California law does not allow some voting members to get their ballots by a faster and more reliable method than others, which would happen if we used the newsletters to distribute the ballots. (Some subscribers get their publications first class, some are bulk rate, and non-subscribers would need to get ballots by separate mailing)

Often, members will have no personal knowledge of particular candidates they are asked to vote on. How will they chose?

Candidates may include summaries of their experience and qualifications with the election materials. Many national membership organizations elect directors on the basis of similar information, without elaborate election campaigns, apparently with generally successful results. A voter may always abstain from voting on particular candidates if the voter doesn't have an opinion. Many members might choose not to vote at all. However, direct election would give, to all who wished to have it, a binding voice in the choice of who runs the Society.

Appendix II: Cost of Distributing Ballots

A rough initial estimate suggests that ballots, mailed by first class postage within the US and international rates elsewhere, might average $1.20 to $.80 per member to print and distribute. The higher estimate assumed two dozen candidates result in a package composed of two 11"x17" sheets printed on both sides and folded to 8.5"x11", mailed with a return envelope inside another envelope and falling in the two ounce weight category. The lower price assumed a smaller slate of candidates and a one ounce package. Printing and inserting were estimated at $.60-.55. No effort was made to find the lowest possible price for printing.

If California law allows distribution by standard, presorted mail rather than first class, and the reduced speed and reliability of this class postage was acceptable, ballots might cost $.90-.80 to print and distribute using the above assumptions.