Organizational rep/individual members in elections

[Collin Kurre]

Hello Farzaneh,

Thanks for raising this issue on the broader list. 

As you imply, one could imagine a situation where an individual member holds views that differ from their organization’s positions or strategies. Perhaps the more fundamental question is whether one person can be both an organizational representative and and individual member. Deciding on this question would preempt the need to determine whether an organizational opinion should invalidate the representing individual’s.

Full disclosure: I was one of the organizational reps who was contacted and opted to forfeit my individual vote in the interest of fairness until this matter is decided by the group.

Kind regards,
Collin Kurre

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Collin Kurre
ARTICLE 19




> On Jul 21, 2018, at 12:21 PM, farzaneh badii <farzaneh.badii at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear all, 
> 
> I have sent the message below to NCSG EC and I think we need to have a discussion about it and make an official decision on this issue. Please chime in:
> 
> At the moment the organizational reps who are individual members of NCSG can participate in the elections as both organizational rep and individual members. Apparently, it has been discussed repeatedly in the past with no decision. Other than they said it is not against the charter.
> 
> Not having remembered that it has been discussed but no decision made, I started contacting those who were listed as an individual member as well as organizational rep on the check-in list and asked them to choose whether they want to be individual members or represent their organization, since being both allowed them to vote twice which I think is not acceptable for the integrity of elections. Tapani corrected me and said the issue was discussed but never decided against https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/election-reform/2017-June/000021.html <https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/election-reform/2017-June/000021.html>
> 
> I personally think it is unfair to allow organizational reps who are individual members to vote twice. This is because organizational reps (usually but not always) have autonomy from their organization to vote as they see appropriate and do not have a mandate as such. If they are also individual members, it provides them with the opportunity to vote twice and I think we need to fix it. 
> 
> It might be too late to do this in this election but we need to discuss and make a decision. I have started explaining the rationale to those who are organizational reps as well as individual members and asked them to decide what they want to do for this election voluntarily until we make a decision. 
> 
> 
> Best
> 
> 
> Farzaneh

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