Posted by Vice Admiral Daniel Lerner (Vice President / Procedures Guru / Personnel Director) in Discussion: LEGOE Final Draft (Ends 2/16/2021)

Posted by Fleet Captain Adam W. (Chief EGO) in Discussion: LEGOE Final Draft (Ends 2/16/2021)

Posted by Vice Admiral Sarah Hemenway (President) in Discussion: LEGOE Final Draft (Ends 2/16/2021)
Posted by… suppressed (3) by the Post Ghost! 👻

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This proposal has us changing the Assistant Election Coordinator to an Emergency Election Coordinator.

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This differs quite a bit from the original suggestion, which was this:

1) Allow the AEC to update the MOTD (and support the EC as needed without assuming powers officially?).

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I have a couple questions as I consider whether or not the latest proposal is better than the original proposal and the status quo.

1) As I recall, some believed having an assistant would be very valuable while others believed it would not be necessary. In the original discussion, I don’t recall a consensus forming. Do we want an assistant for the EC or do we not?

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Yes, I agree that this proposal has taken a different turn and I’m glad that we’ve all had a chance to discuss it to try to come to a better conclusion that meets the actual underlying need instead of the surface wants that always seem to come to mind first.

What kind of consensus are you looking for to deem these topics appropriately discussed?

I’ve now had a chance to look back through the discussion that led us from the Assistant Election Coordinator to the Emergency Election Coordinator. Russ, myself, Cale, and Ben Z. expressed support for the AEC position. Geoff had a really interesting suggestion to allow the EC to decide whether or not to have AEC. Only Daniel expressed a desire to eliminate the AEC position. I appreciate that the idea is not to be chalking up tick marks on one side or another in this process, but we are going a direction here that seemed to be fairly significantly opposed.

As you said, no one commented on what you proposed in the last round, either for or against, so all I know about the membership’s opinion on this is from what was stated in the original discussion. Does the benefit of eliminating the AEC outweigh what is lost by dropping the position? I just want to put that question in front of people before we go ahead with this. I’d particularly be interested in hearing from those who didn’t weigh in previously or who may have changed their thoughts as the discussion went on. If people are content not chiming in, so be it.

I think an obvious point that I forgot to include in my previous post is that there isn’t a lot of effective difference between the Assistant Election Coordinator and the Emergency Election Coordinator. My apologies.

It seemed that, through the discussion, there was confusion about what the role of AEC actually is and part of that confusion was brought on by the “Assistant” in the title, so in addition to returning the ability to vote to the person, I updated the name because this role isn’t intended (as LEGOE as written, given I was the one that added it, and in practice over the last 10+ elections other than the most recent) to be an assistant one, but more of a back-up in case the EC goes MIA.

I don’t know if that helps to explain, but this isn’t really just a two-sided argument.

Sarah
President

The original proposal was to continue to call this person an assistant and to build upon the abilities that assistant would have. The two-person team concept with one being primary and another being secondary is one we widely use in this club. It’s how these election positions have been functioning as far as I know and some of those who have done it have requested we head further that direction rather than away from it.

Now, I have no problem with us taking a one-head-is-better-than-two approach for this role if that’s what the membership wants to do. But everyone who isn’t an exec and has expressed their opinion is in favor of the assistant model. To me that’s more important than whatever the original intent a decade ago was.

You asked what kind of consensus I was looking for. I’ve figured out what the consensus is because I looked back at the posts in this discussion. I was just trying to see if there were any additional opinions that might change that assessment.

Adam W.

As far as I’m aware, the majority of ECs since the introduction of the AEC has mostly used that role as a back-up role, occasionally asking a second opinion, but not often. The AEC is included in almost all decisions by the EC so they can take over EC if something happens. But for one or two exceptions, no EC’s generally did not delegate duties to AEC, which was the original expectation of the role.

I’ve never been an EC or AEC in STF. I have been a returning officer in a real world organisation that was seeking to be wound up and I agreed to that because
A) my boss was a member of the board and couldn’t do it (due to conflict of interest);
and
B) if I didn’t do it, the back and forth debate about it would likely go on for years between the board members (and if you think STF Command is bad at times, believe me, they made STF Command at its most heated look like a kid’s birthday party in comparison - my boss refuses to even discuss things with them and gets me to do so, which is interesting considering we are currently needing to use their set up for our primary tasks).

Please note: I AM NOT OFFERING TO BE ELECTION COORDINATOR. (Capital letters and bolding because I want to be clear on that point and not because I’m shouting). I know I wouldn’t have the patience, time, temperament or enough alcohol to do that role justice. I have also never been Election Coordinator or Assistant Election Coordinator. I have been involved in the elections in asking questions, voting and I even made the mistake of running for VeeP once. So, while I’m not involved in the things behind the scenes of it like Daniel/Joe P/Calé/Sarah/other ECs/AECs that have been in the role, I have been involved in the other side of it.

Do any of the other … Executive Assistant positions (that’s what they are called, isn’t it?) have an assistant? SOX/Librarian/Community Engagement/etc? What happens if they are unable to do their job and some crisis in their area comes up that needs immediate attention? (I mean, the EC is slightly different because they are responsible for running the elctions for Prez/VeeP and EGO and making sure it is fair for all concerned and if something goes wrong there, it is likely to be a bigger problem than in any of the others).

Regarding the responsibilities of the role and what can/can’t be done, I have two real questions about the logistics of running and administering the election.
- MOTD Updates (required by LEGOE legislation) - if EC is uncertain about how to do this, does LEGOE enable them to call on assistance to do that? Who are those people? If the roles allowed to do that is also running for election, how does that get dealt with?
- Regarding the actual creation of the voting card - if the EC is uncertain about how they do that, does LEGOE enable them to call on assistance to do that? And who are those people? If the roles allowed to do that is also running for election, how does that get dealt with?

There was a proposal to either give the AEC a vote and/or make them more of an assistant. There was split views on the former, and I think only one or two former ECs said they used their AECs in the fashion of more of an assistant.

(I was EC for three or four of those elections, I generally didn’t delegate to the AEC except when I had to declare an LOA for a few days.)

Daniel

Daniel

In the end, I believe that whatever we decide has to be supportive of the EC so that they can effectively manage the elections of our club of around 100 people. (And I believe we all want that, I don’t think I’m alone in that desire.)
- It seems we have people who can do the role confident in the technical aspects of it and who take on all of the roles with limited assistance needed.
- It also seems we have other people who can do the role who would appreciate the support that a second person can provide them in the role, to bounce ideas off, and to get technical support from others where LEGOE allows that support to be requested/provided.

Is it somehow able to be done on an EC by EC basis … discussion of the Prez and the EC about whether an AEC is needed? But that gets messy, I guess.

Russell