At the last General Meeting, we had a discussion about voting by proxy. We voted to table the vote until the next meeting (February) and discuss proxy voting online until then.
arguments for proxy voting made during the meeting
@Tanner argued that dues-paying members should be able to vote even if they cannot attend, giving the example from his union where someone who attended every meeting missed one important vote.
@Adri_Martinez shared her personal experience of missing the previous steering committee election vote because of a family matter. She also drew parallels to absentee voting in United States general elections.
Several other members, like @Turcotte, noted that with our current small org size, it’s unlikely that we would see proxy voting being abused.
@Bozzii suggested that potentially strengthening membership requirements could be used to counteract potential for abuse from proxy voting.
arguments against proxy voting made during the meeting
@PeterKraljev suggested alternatives like posting votes in group chats instead of delegating votes.
I raised concerns around potential abuse from someone with a large social network being able to have additional votes of inactive members. However, my primary concern is proxy voters making decisions without the full context from meeting discussions. Because of the way we operate now, coming to general meetings is the main way to be caught up with any debates within the organization or to know what we are currently working on. This is largely a fault of us not getting more detailed updates out to membership and a byproduct of discussions happening in person or on zoom, leaving any members cannot participate “live” out of the loop.
discuss now, vote later
We will be taking a vote on this at the next General Meeting, so if you have thoughts/opinions, please leave them below!
I am sympathetic to the arguments for proxy voting. I do not support the current status quo, where only members with flexible schedules and fewer responsibilities can engage in debates and discussions, effectively making all the decisions. We should, however, learn lessons from organizations like the DSA. Members who are less engaged are not likely to share the same politics as those who are more involved. In the case of the DSA, that means they are more progressive Democrats than socialists. This isn’t a judgment of them; they’re just not going through the same process of struggle and education as people with more hands-on experience who have spent time discussing the limitations of progressive politics. But I also think it’s the responsibility of more engaged people to reach out to less active members and “pull them left” if they don’t want others to vote for progressive positions via proxy.
In my ideal world, most of our decisions would take place asynchronously, and we would have plenty of time—say, four weeks—to consider them. That would give members time to discuss at a General Meeting without having to make immediate decisions, to write up arguments, to talk to members one-on-one, and to engage with each other during other canvassing or social events. It would allow everyone ample time to make their own decisions, change their minds, and convince others. How we are treating this proxy vote would be very similar, except we would allow people to vote in this thread, with the deadline being the start of February’s General Meeting, instead of only allowing people at the next General Meeting to vote.
Perhaps at General Meetings, the membership could have the option to switch a vote to online voting with a deadline of the next General Meeting.
Or, as @Bozzii suggested, we could implement proxy voting but only if the member has attended a high number of the last several months of meetings. That way, it does not impact their actual membership status, but if you are active and have to miss a meeting, it still allows your vote to count.
There are still questions about whether this would apply to all votes and whether proxy votes affect quorum counts.
As I had mentioned before, there are many cases in which voting by proxy is warranted and should be allowed.
-voter is sick
-voter is otherwise physically unable to make it to the meeting
-voter has a work schedule that doesn’t allow them to participate in the vote
-voter doesn’t have service with which to attend online
-many others
I think the number and importance of these reasons for missing a vote far outweighs the potential drawbacks. If I were in a position where I wanted to vote in a crucial moment and yet, for whatever reason, could not attend the meeting, I would be pretty disappointed.
Simply allowing someone to delegate another member (in good standing) to submit a vote on their behalf seems like a no-brainer, though I appreciate the arguments against such an approach. If you disagree, I very much encourage you to reply to this with why. I am open to having my mind changed!
Maybe we could set a system where members gain the right to vote by proxy after a probationary period?
Maybe attend some high percentage of general meetings in a year?
And additionally the privilege would be rescinded after some period of inactivity?
It might help weed out potential bad actors and it doesn’t require us to dig into people’s personal lives to determine if they have a valid excuse for missing the meeting.
I’m not really stoked about either idea personally.
Both in person only and proxy voting have issues and I can see benefits to either system
Congress has had problems with proxy voting in subcommittees I believe.
Of course we are a lil different from congress since we aren’t paid to do WCU work full time