Posted by Vice Admiral Daniel Lerner (Procedures Guru / Personnel Director / Chief EGO) in Discussion: Role of Assistant Election Coordinator

Posted by Fleet Captain Adam W. (EGO) in Discussion: Role of Assistant Election Coordinator

Posted by Vice Admiral Daniel Lerner (Procedures Guru / Personnel Director / Chief EGO) in Discussion: Role of Assistant Election Coordinator
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Following discussion with Calé and Silke after the last presidential election, we have come up with several proposed edits to LEGOE. Most are minor language changes and reformatting, which will be presented later on in the discussion, but one of the larger discussion topics is the role of the Assistant Election Coordinator. The AEC was put in place following a near-miss with an EC disappearing during an election, so the idea was that the AEC had no role except to take the reigns if the EC did disappear again. This comes at the cost of a member losing the opportunity to participate in the election process, whether as an election official or as a voting member.

Here is what LEGOE currently says:

III. Role of the Election Coordinator and Assistant Election Coordinator

The Election Coordinator is an Executive Assistant with complete powers over the Elections. However, their power is limited to the Elections only, and ceases to exist once the elections are over and all pending disputes are resolved.

The Assistant Election Coordinator is an Executive Assistant whose powers are only exercised during one of the following conditions: a) the Election Coordinator has declared an LOA during the Election Season, b) the Election Coordinator is AWOL during the Election Season, or c) the Election Coordinator has missed a deadline contained in this Edict or the Election Timetable. During the stated conditions, the Assistant Election Coordinator’s powers are those of the Election Coordinator, and shall also be required to perform the tasks of the Election Coordinator.

The Election Coordinator may not delegate any tasks unless specific assistance or expertise is required, subject to the requirements under this Edict for the Assistant Election Coordinator to perform the Election Coordinator’s tasks. TECH is required to provide the Election Coordinator with whatever access to the STF server and system resources are required in order to fulfill his responsibilities and provide assistance in using them as needed. Such resources may include, but are not limited to, server shell access, file upload access, IRC operator status, and member account information.

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The awesome election team has asked that the following two changes be considered:

1) Allow the AEC to update the MOTD (and support the EC as needed without assuming powers officially?).
2) Allow the AEC to vote at some point if it is determined that they will not need to take over for the EC (24 hours before the end of the election?).

We would all love to hear your thoughts on these proposed modifications (legalese to come after discussion)!

Sarah
President

I think both of those make sense, especially point 1. It seems unfortunate that point 1 wasn’t in place already.
Regarding point 2, while I suppose it is possible something could happen to the EC in the past 24 hours, it is unlikely that something will happen to them in the past 24 hours of the election campaign, and I guess if it does happen, there’s a way of the AEC (or would they be aEC at that point) to disregard their own vote in that period.

If the AEC should be allowed to vote in the final 24 hours (or whatever that period is - 24 hours seems sensible ot me), would they also be able to endorse either of the two remaining tickets at that point?

• Russell

Point 1 seems like an obvious one to clearly allow.

Point 2 I think I like the idea of allowing the AEC to vote. I wouldn’t do the 24 hour thing though. Have them vote whenever they want, only it just needs to be discarded in the event they need to assume the EC role.

It would be inappropriate for the AEC to endorse.

Adam W.

Point 1: Yes in regards to the point outside the parenthesis. It should be kept in mind that the title “Assistant Election Coordinator” is a slight misnomer, and was used because I didn’t know what else to call the position when I first suggested during the last major LEGOE review (which created the position). It was generally agreed during that discussion that the position would not be a traditional “assistant” position and would not take on the overall duties of the EC. In hindsight, “Backup Election Coordinator” is a better description of the position. I say all of this, because if we are going to give more abilities and delegated responsibilities to the AEC, we need to be very explicit about it in the bylaw. A general “support the EC” power, for example, is too broad and vague.

Point 2: I’ve given a lot of thought about this one, and while I understand the reasons behind it, I believe it is very bad procedurally.

Since the introduction of the AEC, a practice has developed (a good practice) to essentially copy the AEC into every discussion the EC has. The AEC is included in complaint emails, given summaries of issues the EC has identified, given copies of election-related DMs, etc. Why? So that the AEC can do their primary job: step into the role of EC if the EC disappears, and able to do so with an understanding of what has been going on behind the scenes up until that point.

When candidates email the EC, they do so knowing the EC is an impartial and objective decision-maker who isn’t supporting or voting for any of them. There is no need to worry about how things will sway the EC’s vote, because except in very rare circumstances (a straight tie, which has never happened to my knowledge), the EC is not allowed to vote or be partial.

Similarly, the EC is made aware of other issues behind the scenes - issues involving the candidates themselves, issues involving voters, etc. Sometimes this leads to action by the EC. Sometimes the EC believes action is unwarranted, and the rest of the voters will go unware. But we give all of this responsibility and access (I mean informational access, not website/technical/security access) knowing the EC cannot vote.

And all of the above is shared with the AEC during the election in case the AEC has to take over from the EC. Yet unlike the EC, who can only vote in very rare circumstances, the proposal being made here is the AEC can vote in almost every election (i.e. when the EC doesn’t disappear, which to date hasn’t happened as far as I’m aware).

Because of my work, the best analogy I have (and to be fair, it’s not quite correct, but its close) is the whole judge-and-jury trial concept. The judge hears things the jury doesn’t, and then makes decisions on what the jury can be told, when the jury should be told it, and what actions to take to run the actual trial. The jury then makes the final decision at the end of the trial. Now imagine you had a backup judge sitting next to the main judge, and the main judge shares all of their notes, thoughts, etc. with the backup judge, and the backup judge sits in on all arguments the jury isn’t present for. At the end of the trial, a juror is lost - could we just say “well, the backup judge got to hear everything the jury heard, and since we don’t need the backup judge, let’s make them the replacement juror?”. Of course, not.

I get that the person in the AEC role has an awful position. We take an experienced member we all trust who could potentially be AEC, and if election goes perfect, they cannot make any decisions and they aren’t allowed to vote. When I first introduced it, I said it was a very unusual position, and one created because of lack of a better solution. But just letting them vote at the end of the election if they weren’t needed is unfair procedurally. And the procedural unfairness to the club as a whole must outweigh the unfairness to the individual holding the position.

I would try to remedy the situation (if it needs to be remedied) by giving more delegated tasks to the AEC so they have more to do during the election to make up for the fact that they cannot vote.

Daniel

After some additional thoughts and discussion, I would like to make a counter-proposal, and that is to do away with the AEC all together and replace it with a mid-term replacement EC procedure.

The advantages is that we’re not losing two votes out of the approximately 100 members. (I have been reminded privately that when we first introduced the AEC, we had 200 members, so losing 2 experienced voters instead of one was less of a concern.) Ad we don’t have to deal with the tricky procedural issues.

One disadvantage is that we lose the “assistant” aspect of the AEC. But as most ECs can attest - both from before and after the introduction of the role - an assistant has really not been needed. Administratively, it’s not a huge task - and not one easily divided up, especially as the security access is still limited to just the EC (for example, only the EC can see the votes, etc). It’s really an issue of a last-minute mid-election LOA that needs to be addressed, and we can figure it out.

Instead, now that we have EGO, we can come up with a procedure. I would suggest the following:

In the event of the Election Coordinator going AWOL during the Election Season or missing a deadline in the Election Timetable without addressing the issue of the missed deadline, the President, with the consent of the majority of EGO, may replace the Election Coordinator by Edict. In the same Edict, a replacement Election Coordinator must be announced, with the consent of a majority of EGO. The replacement Election Coordinator may not be a candidate, have nominated a candidate, endorsed a candidate, or shown any other types of partiality for this Election. Preference shall be to appoint the immediate past Election Coordinator as the replacement Election Coordinator.

So instead of a Presidential decision which EGO can choose to veto or not, this actually is a group decision by the President and EGO. This is because there may be issues, like the President running for re-election. Keep in mind it is the practice for Presidents to appoint Election Coordinators for elections they plan to run for re-election in, so appointing a mid-term EC is not completely crazy. But by making it a group decision with EGO, we can ensure some degrees of checks on this decision. In addition, we have identified the ideal candidate for a replacement EC - the immediate past EC (provided that person has not shown partiality in this election).

I also thought about replacing the President with the VP if the President is running for re-election, but besides the fact that the Prez already appointed the first EC, the Prez and VP may both be running in the election, and then things just become very complicated.

I have some thoughts about what to do if the EC needs admin support, such as MOTD updates, etc, but I would like to see how my counter-proposal for a replacement EC procedure flies first.

Daniel

I would imagine as the Election Coordinator it would be really nice to have the AEC in position if for no other reason to have someone there to talk over issues with that come up. I would think we’d be better off not losing the position.

Adam W.

So in the four (I think it’s four?) elections I’ve been EC, there really wasn’t much for the AEC to do or contribute to. (In fact, one of my AEC’s may have gone AWOL during the election without us noticing.) It’s usually a “Yes, that’s looks good,” kind of thing. We also had many, many, many elections before we introduced the AEC in 2008 (I have to double check the exact year we introduced it).

But I think there’s a way to create solutions to have additional support for non-critical admin stuff, like MOTD updates, etc., without the need for having to deal with whether we have a second person on standby as possible replacement EC.

Daniel

I think the amount of contribution from the AEC depends entirely on the EC in post and the AEC. If you are an AEC who wants to be involved and support the EC it is a very frustrating role. If you are wanting to just learn how to do things and how the role works it’s fine but again as a training role isn’t actually offering much hand on experience.

Personally I don’t think any one person should need to contend with the election things alone. I think it’s both sensible to have someone there was back up but also sensible to have someone to whiteboard with and to help ensure that the EC remainshas fair as they can be.

I don’t think getting rid of this role is a good idea but I do think it needs to be defined as a role. If this means that the person cannot vote then so be it but I would rather personally that the role was defined and stayed with no vote than was scrapped.

I also would like to point out that the AEC actually would have a better view of the candidates than many in the club would in casting their vote in that by being in this position and seeing how candidates respond and react to issues or complaints or whatever off the boards they are getting a true flavour if how that candidate would handle issues that may come up in later points of their term if they were successful. But that may be a by the by.

I know it isn’t your experience Dan, and you are the more experienced in the role so I am happy to say that it may be me as a person rather than the role having a need but I found Silke’s help to be invaluable this election and I think two heads are better than one ultimately.

Cale
Two-pence worth