VOTING - for members NOT attending the swap

[Sanjay]

Matt,

I agree with you a 100%. There has to be a way to allow people to vote without being there. Even if it means not being able to vote for people in a sequential manner.

May be the electronic votes, can be run like a regular election. If someone looses a election for a prior position then they just wont get the electronic votes for that position.

Clearly, these are all workable issues.

Being a member and not having your vote count because you can't be there is just not fair.

There are times issues come up, just because its difficult to think through all situations, but the power of the BOD is to be able to at least recognize the situation and come up with a workable solution.


sanjay.

 

[E-A-G-L-E-S]

thank you, thats all i was trying to say Sanjay

 

[Fizz71]

Ok...then I guess the BOD will have to discuss this...AGAIN.

I'm sorry if you think I wasn't calm Rich..I thought I was being calm. When I see a post that starts "We have already agreed that.." on a thread where you're talking as if you have authority..it un-nerves me a little, but I took almost an hour typing and wording that response and trying to stay fair and level-headed.

This will be a BOD decision so we will work it out in the time we have left.

But I do have this comment...to your statement from others:
...[others] will be coming to the event but not paying dues until all of this has been taken care of...

To me THAT is total BS. IMO If you want a say, then be a member. Anything else is just petty...we're talking about a whopping $24 here. That's like saying I want to vote for the US president before I decide if I want to be a US citizen. I can understand people's concerns, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

But again...I will leave it up to the board..I'll let you know what happens. Of course..this does mean that there will now be a chance that we can't FINISH the elections at the swap...which was the reason we leaned this way in the first place.

--Kevin

 

[E-A-G-L-E-S]

Kevin, with all due respect, this should have been taken care of, no? I was willing to go to our 2nd swap of year and pay dues there...which probably won't be for another 6 months. So paying $24 isn't a problem, but the fact that ncpars only has 2 meetings in a whole year, its downright wrong to not be able to vote if you can't make one event.
I would a ppreciate a heads up either way as soon as available.
thanks - matt

*kevin, i know you put your free time into this club and appreciate your efforts, but this is wong-imo

 

[keeperofcorals]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7258110#post7258110 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Fizz71
But I do have this comment...to your statement from others:
...[others] will be coming to the event but not paying dues until all of this has been taken care of...
To me THAT is total BS. IMO If you want a say, then be a member. Anything else is just petty...we're talking about a whopping $24 here. That's like saying I want to vote for the US president before I decide if I want to be a US citizen. I can understand people's concerns, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.--Kevin

Unless I'm reading this wrong and if I am I apologize. But from what I took of this comment, if you read posts that were made since the start of the "What would you like to see changed" thread you will see where people have made the comment I posted here about not wanting to pay dues. I don't think members who are upset and don't want to support monetary wise until things are taken care of is petty. You can't compare a reef club to US citizenship and voting.

It's also not understable why you would think that figuring out what to do about people voting would cause there not to be an election? This topic of non attending voting isn't something that is very hard to figure out.

 

[E-A-G-L-E-S]

i have been contacted, so hopefully this situation will be resolved by the mod in a timely manner

happy reefin:smokin:

 

[keeperofcorals]

??
ok

happy reefing to you also

 

[E-A-G-L-E-S]

just meant that the bod contacted me to say they would work on resolution, so i'm hoping this will get taken care of :smokin:

 

[keeperofcorals]

oh ok
You threw me off when you said mod lol

Yes, hopefully it will work out.

 

[Fizz71]

I didn't say there wouldn't be an election... You have to understand how long this was kicked around (and how painful it was) with the board to come up with an honest, fair, and bylaw legit way to vote. I was under the impression that everybody on the BOD was in agreement that the only way to do it was live at the swap. We didn't really decided whether or not 2005 members could still vote and personally I thought it would be a no-brainer so we'll vote on it. We were hoping to do the elections at the swap so we will have a definitive, honest, fair vote and leave the swap with officer elects being known. If we need to wait for email ballots..this won't be done for weeks. The current nominee list is not the final list. We have people to add....Ron (sixpackrt) is one of them. He threw his hat in the ring to me yesterday and he can be added to the ballot at the event if he wants..plus right now we don't even have enough people to fill all the slots. We couldn't put out an email vote today if we wanted to! Your list is not the final one!

As for dues...This event NCPARS will be putting out over $1200. We will only make that back if we get some membership OR 180 or so people show (kids and students don't pay)...And membership will also mean that the next swap you'd get in free so we'll be making less at the next swap if you DO sign up. We understood that completly going into this and we wanted to do it to try to rejuvinate the club and finally be able to help Mo out financially by backing his event...... But right now, at this swap, your membership/entry is the ONLY income we'll have. We need to keep enough money in our account to settle up current bills and still have enough to hold the next swap.

And it's not all about money...I just don't feel that _I_ should have a say in a democratic club if I'm not willing to put up membership in advance. You're basically saying...I only want to be a member if my guy wins...that's silly IMO....especially when we're talking about and additional $14 over the entry fee. How much do you plan on dropping at this event Rich? ...I'm figuring $200 or $300 for me since I'm not selling a whole lot. $14 in this hobby is nothing.

But hey...who am I....in 65 days..I'm a ghost...so in the mean time I'll do what the board votes on. If the club falls apart because we went from having fun at events to bickering about politics, so be it...I'm out. I'm requesting a BOD meeting this weekend, emails to discuss in chat form, the email already went out. I'll let you know the results.

Trying to please everybody is an impossibility...the best we can do is be as fair as we can without over complicating the process....which is now happening since this was brought up. But...so be it.

--Kevin

 

[keeperofcorals]

First of all, if you read the post completely about the email voting you would see that there is a deadline to cast your vote electronically by email. It would not take weeks like you say it will. The results would be available at the start of the swap.

Also, I did not say in any way that the list that was posted was the final list. Today is the final day that the Nominations Committee has to post the final nomination list. If Rahn (sixpackrt) wants to nominate himself it needs to be done through the Nominations Committee before the deadline which is what the bylaws state. This can be done by emailing one of us or by posting under the thread designated for nominations. The Nominations Committee are the only ones that are to be handling the nomination list.

There was also this post (quoted below), done 8 days ago, in the nomination thread. This should have given sufficent information regarding the list and what to do about it. I know it was seen because there was response to it.

Nominee List
Since the hacking on ncpars.org took place we can't get the latest information So, below is the list of names with positions that was posted earlier and with info. that I received through emails.
If there is anyone missing or any of the info. below is incorrect please let us know. If there is anyone else interested in running for the BOD or wants to take their name off please let us know that also.

President: Kelly, Brad
Vice-President: Ricky, Kelly
Vice-President of Public Affairs: Brad, Jon, Ricky
Secretary: Ricky, Scott B.
Treasurer: Rich
At-Large Directors: Scott B., Mo, Sanjay, Brad, Ricky, Carl, Tim, Rahn (nixnuts)

If there is a worry about people wasting a vote through email voting you can always give them an option to say who else they would vote for in other positions. It's not like there are 20 people running. There is only a couple of people which isn't hard to move people around when you're figuring out alternative voting. If the person placing the email vote doesn't want to choose alternative voting or they fail to do so then it's on them and no one else.

Also, you brought up about voting for each position seperately and that the email votes would cause a problem with this. All that needs to be done is if there are email votes, seperate them out by position and add them in when tallying. It may take a little bit of time to seperate out and make a list but I'm sure there won't be an enourmous amount of email votes.

As for dues...This event NCPARS will be putting out over $1200. We will only make that back if we get some membership OR 180 or so people show (kids and students don't pay)...And membership will also mean that the next swap you'd get in free so we'll be making less at the next swap if you DO sign up. We understood that completly going into this and we wanted to do it to try to rejuvinate the club and finally be able to help Mo out financially by backing his event...... But right now, at this swap, your membership/entry is the ONLY income we'll have. We need to keep enough money in our account to settle up current bills and still have enough to hold the next swap.

You should have thought of this statement when people were mentioning that they didn't want to pay until things were taken care of. They weren't saying, from what I read, that they won't be members if the person they vote for is elected. Yeah, there was mentioning of people that other would rather not see on the BOD but that is just an honest truth when you're dealing with an election. They were talking about seeing change with more then just BOD members. $24 isn't a lot of money like you said but it's the priciple of the fact that paying dues is showing support and people don't want to show any type of support when they don't agree and nothing is changing yet. And, if enough money isn't made at this swap there are a lot of different ways to hold an event without spending a lot of the clubs money that might not be available.

 

[eastonreef]

matt,

i am in the same boat as you,,, and i could not have put it any better. i also paid in october. i never saw my name added to the membership list at all. let me know how it goes--

lisa

 

[Fizz71]

You're missing this Rich:

Article VI, Section 1
Paragraph 5: The members of the Society shall have the right to nominate candidates from the floor at the time
of the presentation of the slate of nominees and at the time of the annual election of officers. All nominees must
receive a second nomination vote by one member before votes will be cast.

Ron (not Rahn) or anyone else for that matter does not need to give you their name now. They can be nominated ON THE FLOOR at the time of the election. So we can't do email balloting until we close nominations which was planned to occur AT THE SWAP.

That's what I meant by "your list is not the final list". He doesn't have to do it through the nominations committee, although I asked Ron too. There may be others that want to be on the ballot too that are waiting for the event to be added. So the email would need to go out AFTER the swap unless we close nominations online.

And there are ways around voting in order and not wasting votes..I thought of it earlier today..people can rank the order of their votes so if your #1 pick for VP got pres we use your #2 for your vote. The board is actively discussing it, we'll decide if we accept email ballots and let you know if we do on this thread. We're looking to chat (instead of passing emails) this weekend, but we have to look at schedules.

And Lisa...if you paid 2005 dues and didn't make it on the list here:
http://www.ncpars.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=7

..then you should have said something rather than waiting for it to come up and making it a complaint. The very first thing on that page is:
The following folks have paid their 2005 dues as of 8/24/2005. Please report any errors or omissions to kfizz@ncpars.org

..did you send me an email? I honestly thought ALL of 2005 members where up there. That "as of" date should actually have been changed. I was not aware that anybody was missing from the 2005 list. I apologize if I missed you, but I do that page and the actual membership list is on a computer at Mal's business. Those are the official records...my list contains only what I was told about.

This is a perfect example of MY complaint how people let things bug them but don't bother to say..."hey...how come I'm no up there yet?" We are all volunteers and certainly make mistakes. All it would take is an email...rather than a post that's 3 months overdue. By all means...kick me in the *** if I'm missing something, please don't let it go and then complain months later.

And if you're talking about 2006...all the 2006 will go up after the swap which is the first 2006 collection other than if you wanted to mail your dues in. We will do new contact sheets for everybody including people who signed up and paid at the 2005 swap for the 2006 dues. We have A LOT of bad email addresses. So even when we DO send emails out..they bounce.

--Fizz

 

[Fizz71]

BTW....I just updated the memberlist with the latest copy of the members that I was given a few weeks back. I don't have a list that says 2005 or 2004 though so I'm hoping it is right. If there are ANY errors, please let me know. I'm trying to clean it up visually a little since it came from Excel.

--Fizz

 

[keeperofcorals]

You don't read posts very well do you?

I already said that nominations that are not done by the end of the day today will have to be done on the floor at the swap event. Any nominations 10 days or more BEFORE the swap need to be submitted by the nominations committee.

Since you keep using the bylaws -
Here is that statement in the bylaws:
Paragraph 4: Before the election of officers, the Nomination Committee shall present a slate of any number of nominees for each office which is to be filled by election. The slate of candidates and necessary information about each candidate will be available for review by the membership at least 10 days before the election.
This also from the bylaws:
Paragraph 3: The following Select Committees are hereby authorized.
a.Nomination Committee - Whose duty shall be the preparation of a slate of nominees for the annual election of officers

As of the end of the day today, the list submitted by the Nominations Committee will be the final list from the Nominations Committee. After today the Nominations Committee is technically done unless for some unseen reason there would be another election done before June 30th.

Question for everyone on the board. Is there a problem with ending nominations with this 10th day cutoff that the Nominations Committee has? If not, can it be amended to say so in the bylaws? Or, can there be another cutoff set so that this situation doesn't happen in the future? In my opinion it doesn't really make sense offering nominations from the floor. If someone can't decide that they want to run before the cutoff date then they shouldn't run.

What do other members think?

There seems to be a very big controversy over the fact that people can't vote if they're not in attendance. And, there also seems to be a problem that this election won't be done and over with by the time of the swap.

 

[Barney121]

Boy, it just frustrates me unbelievably that discussions/issues so quickly go downhill. There are some interesting and important issues here that deserve discussion. After a contentious few days at work and a 10 month old with a cold who had me up from 3:30-5 AM today (THAT'S the important stuff in life), I felt physically ill this morning at seeing another last minute argument. If I develop high blood pressure, youââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ll know why. Some thoughts:

1) This can be worked out.
2) This is our first election, itââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s inevitable that we have some problems and donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t anticipate some things.
3) We probably canââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t get everything perfect this time; we will have to learn from it. Iââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢d like to have a perfect election procedure, but we just might not have one.
4) There are actually only a few concrete issues here.
5) Iââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢m glad these questions came up, although I wish they hadnââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t come up this late just because we have other swap things we have to get planned like running the raffle, running the doorââ"šÂ¬Ã‚¦ oh, and fragging. Some of these issues are worth long discussion but we just donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t have time, and we will probably have to band-aid some of them for this election. But of course things come up when they come up...
6) The bylaws do say that only members can vote; they also say that exact procedures for elections will be established by the board of directors (with input from members, which we have). Weââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ll figure out some solutions (and post them).
7) Minor substantive points: weââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢d specified straightforward election procedures for this first election ââ"šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ we must have an in person vote. The electronic ballot point is vague and can be resolved. Rich, you might be right that we want to change the way the nominations are done, and this can be done via a proposal to modify the bylaws that's voted on by the members. In general terms, allowing for floor nominations is intended to give the membership the option to do something if they donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t like the slate of nominees developed by the committee. I think we have to figure out a way to have the elections finished at the swap, but I can't imagine we'd really get stuck on that. Proposals and ideas are welcome.
8) This can be worked out. [deep breath]

 

[eastonreef]

fizz
you wonder why people go at you. in is your tone,, i can see your finger wagging at me through your post. maby YOU misunderstood what i was saying. i was not complaining nor saying you did not do a lot of work for the club. i was trying to find out if the online voting was going to happen. then i posted i was missing from the list so if it was a problem that would cause my vote not to count i would see about having it corrected. i did not correct you in october because since my dad was dying at the time it really did not seem very important.
the reason people have issues with you is very clear .....
just so you know that post was directed to matt. since he and i seem to be in the same situation i thought he could keep me posted. but thanks for your concern,.

 

[bmkindig]

the things you miss while your at work. these are issuses the current bod have been trying to figure out for a long time and now that we have pushed to hold elections before the next year for the bod woulds start we have to see people yelling at each other over something that hasn't been done before. with people acting like this there won't even be a next year because of this childnish.

 

[Murph72]

I second that Brad. With what I've read the last couple of days pertaining to NCPARS and the swap with the confusion/accusations and this present elections thread, I'm very disheartened.
People, please....this is a h-o-b-b-y. Stop attacking each other. Discuss things like adults. Realize that things written in emails have "tones" because readers give them "tones." Don't read an intentional tone into an email unless it is filled with exclamation points, capital letters and "you stink" type of comments. Really, some of the threads I truly didn't read as being mean, while others certainly were. I find this all completely unnecessary over a hobby that we're all supposed to enjoy.
And you wonder why more of us aren't joining the BOD? I can't imagine being in a voluntary organization where the members of the board are bickering with each other like this.
At this point I'm not sure who I'm going to vote for, but I'd like to have a mix of people that won't tear each other's heads off. This attack of our current officers when you don't agree with them is not very civilized. If you have a suggestion, that's fine, if you have a gripe restate it into a suggestion without the nasty asides.

 

[keeperofcorals]

Scott - Thank you for your input. A lot of your points are agreeable and some of us are glad to see the BOD working towards a solution. I wish also that this issue was brought out sooner but it wasn't even thought of until we started hearing from some people about being absent from the events.

eastonreef - I will have to agree with you. People try to cover up what their "tone" is in a post or email by saying that they are stressing what they are saying but if you look up internet etiquette, words that are put into capital letters, use of exclamation points and such are showing that the writer is in anger and is yelling at someone. Also the use of words that become censored shows that someone is arguing/yelling at someone else.

I was going to comment on what has been said about this being an argument, yelling match or whatever else may have been said but it's pointless. No matter what people say that maybe in any way against certain BOD members it automatically becomes an issue.
Again, I thank Sanjay, Scott and any other BOD member who is handling all of this calmly and constructively.

This thread was started to help out the members who are not going to be in attendance at the swap. It was not started to argue, bash, go against or any other form of defiance that others may think of.

Sorry if this act of help caused an inconvience.