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12th January 2010 12:41 | by Andrew Robinson
As promised in the forums, we are holding elections for the party's officer roles this month.
While the officers were originally elected to serve a 2 year term, we all agreed that it would be good for the party for there to be be an opportunity to change direction if needed between the party's formation and the first election it takes part in. It is also good for us to have officers that are elected democratically by aid up party members, as opposed to the current situation where 2 of the 5 officers were elected by members of the forum before the party was officially registered, some of whom may now not be party members.
The 4 roles we are required to fill by law are Leader, Treasurer, Nominating Officer and Campaigns Officer. The reason we have these 4 roles is that they are the positions that we are required to register formally with the electoral commission. We also took the option to declare an official Data Controller, since data privacy is once of our core concenrs. As the party grows, we will probably want to add new roles, and form a larger Executive committee, but we don't believe that this is the right time to be doing so.
It may come as a surprise to see the roles of Nominating Officer and Treasurer being voted on, since the people currenty doing this job were only recently elected, but in the interests of fairness and keeping our promise of January elections, as well as synchronising the dates of the next election, both those officers have agreed to put themselves up for reelection now.
How to stand for election
The law requires that these formal posts can only be occupied by people who are registered to vote, and we require that you actually be a member of the party before you can stand. You can stand for more than one post, but the law insists that at least 2 different people occupy posts, so that may cause problems. The process itself is very simple, just post in this thread to indicate that you intend to stand, and you will appear on the ballot. Of course you will stand a much better chance if you tell people why they should vote for you, and threads where candidates for each officer role can do that will be posted soon. There is a list of candidate questions generated by party memebers on the Wiki, which you may like to answer in those threas.
Timescale
Applications will be accepted from now up to Midnight on Friday 22nd January.
Voting will start as soon after the applications close as possible, and will end at midnight on the Saturday 30th January. The results will be announced as soon as possible after then, and the new officers will formally take up their roles at midnight on the 31st January.
We expect the 'as soon as possible' parts to take less than an hour or two, but if we have any technical problems we will extend the voting time to ensure that members have at least 1 week in which to cast their votes.
8 comments
You are right, the Data Controller post is also be up for re-election. It's technically an optional post as far as the Electoral Commission are concerned, but since we have one, it should be subject to the same rules. I'll amend my post now.
Thanks for the prompt clarification.
Do the current post holders also have to post the thread indicated by Andy if they wish to be retained?
Yes. We shouldn't give the post holders an unfair advantage by not subjecting them to the same rules as everyone else. I suppose that in theory there is one exception though: If there were no applications at all for a given role, and then the current post holders would have to stay on for the remainder of their term, or until a new election was held, whichever was the sooner, but that seems very unlikely.
If we follow the convention for previous elections then we permit members the options to 'reopen nominations' and to 'abstain'. If a current exec does not want to stand, that is equivalent to resigning. Hence, we can distinguish between the case where the current incumbent stands unopposed, and where nobody stands. If the current incumbent stands unopposed, there is still a legitimate reason to vote, as members may opt to reopen nominations. If nobody stands, there is a de facto requirement to reopen nominations and the vote is delayed. The difference is that the current incumbent should not have a way to bypass a vote and keep their post indefinitely just because they decided not to stand.
Any exec has a right to resign, and the party's inability to find a successor should not infringe that right. However, you would hope that a sense of duty would prevail, with the incumbent continuing until such time as a replacement is nominated and voted for by members.
The reopen and abstain options will indeed be present, as they are in all our internal elections for officers. I suppose that we could technically end up in odd situations if for example we have no candidates and 'reopen nominations' option loses to 'abstain', but the chance of this happening is so small that I think we can afford to deal with it if it happens rather than plan in advance.
As I know Eric is aware, but it's worth going over for the benefit of people who haven't been officers before, the same Electoral Commission rules that say we legally have to have at least 2 different people in the officer roles also formalise where responsibilities fall if people resign - for example if the treasurer resigns, the burden of financial penalties that can be issued for breaking the rules on acceptable donations transfers to the party leader. This means we have a model that we must follow if the sense of duty referred to does not prevail.
If there are no candidates, there is no election. You just reopen nominations and hope somebody steps forward. When they do, you hold the election.
In the situation where an exec resigns and nobody stands, it's reasonable to follow the precedent in law to assign duties to another exec.
And in the case where we don't have enough execs to be legal... well, then whoever is left (the last execs) would have to wind up the party. But now I'm just spelling out the rules for the sake of completeness.
I think many members will be confused that this is an election of the four 'main' officers, rather than an election for the entire exec committee. There are five positions on the exec committee, the four officers you refer to plus the Data Controller, a position currently occupied by Miah Gregory. All five were originally chosen by a pre-formation poll of supporters.
Please clarify what this election means for the fifth member of the executive committee. Will Miah continue to sit on the exec without being approved by a members' vote? Or will the role of Data Controller be dropped from the exec committee?