Archive: General Nomination thread: IMPORTANT, READ FIRST

[azhao]

As has been discussed, the constitution will be finished before the voting period, however the application/nomination period has begun.

This period shall last from 1st June to 15th June and the voting period (by means yet undecided) shall last from the 16th June to the 29th June, results shall be posted on 30th June and the roles shall begin service on the 1st of July.

You may only apply yourself, not another member.

You may apply for more than one office, however, due to electoral commission restrictions, in order to have at least 2 officers you will only be permitted to apply for a maximum of 3 offices, if you accidentaly apply for more than 3 please e-mail us at admin@pirateparty.org.uk detailing which 3 you wish to use.

Please bear in mind all applicants must be 18 by the 15th June in order to apply, however, due to the democratic and unregistered nature of the party, under 18's will be allowed to vote during the voting period. During the voting period every member will have 1 vote for each of the offices.

If there are any mistakes on the threads please don't hesitate to post here, otherwise don't post here.

Threads:

Party Leader

Treasurer

Nominating Officer

Data Controller

Campaigns Officer

[Sharkz]

The treasurer will be in control and responsible for the Pirate Party of the United Kingdom's assets. Applicants should have soame experience

From the treasurer. Soame should be some.

This period shall last from 1st June to 15th June and the voting period (by means yet undecided) shall lasat

This article. Lasat should be last

[rancidpunk]

During the voting period every member will have 1 vote for each of the offices.

You need to sort out party membership first and we also need a membership secretary.
Forum membership can't be the only requirement for a vote. We need a signed membership application from each person containing at least the following,
Full name and address,
Details of any previous or present involvement with other political parties, organizations, pressure groups, etc. This is to protect the party, it is your choice what other parties you join but we need to ask/know. We also need to state that;
This information will not prejudice your application to join and will be completely confidential and held under the provisions of the DPA and only available to Party Officers with the approval of two other officers. Failure to disclose information that may later embarass the party may lead to removal of membership.
There are loads of other things that need to be stated and I will post a draft membership application if you want me to. Has anyone decide what membership fees will be charged, if any?
We all need to realise that this is a legitimate political party we are trying to form and persuading people to vote for us is hugely different from asking people to make a commitment to joining the party.

[Andy_R]

Rancidpunk is right, we do need to get all this stuff done in the right order, and it's not at all clear what the right order is!

Here's my opinion, based on the Electoral Comission's guidance on registering a political party ( http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/_ ... -Guide.pdf )

To register as a political party we need the following:
1) The £150 registration fee
2) A party constitution (This will usually cover things such as how the party is organised and
how it governs its business.)
3) A financial scheme which demonstrates how the party will comply with the legal finance requirements imposed by the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (not actually as tough as it sounds, there's a template on the website)
4) A party leader, a treasurer and a nominating officer (one person doing 2 of these jobs is allowed but all 3 can't be the same person)

Looking at those 4, it seems we do need to do some electing before we officially become a party, and there's a bit of a chicken and egg situation with membership fees, given that we have to raise £150 somehow, but we can't ask people to pay to be members when we are not yet an official party.

I think the priority is to get a treasurer who can round up the £150 (t-shirt sales?) while we finalise a constitution and financial scheme. We'll need a leader (or at least an interim leader) once those bits are done, but obviously having one earlier wouldn't be a problem.

Then we can register as an official party, then we can start looking for members.

I suggest the very top priority is actually getting an interim decision making process, so we can actually decide stuff instead of just debating! We need to have some sort of process that ends up with 'the official decision of the party about (whatever) is (whatever).'

... so I'm off to start a thread about that!

[NikTheGeek]

Looking at those 4, it seems we do need to do some electing before we officially become a party, and there's a bit of a chicken and egg situation with membership fees, given that we have to raise £150 somehow, but we can't ask people to pay to be members when we are not yet an official party.

I would pay a small amount by way of PayPal donation, as long as I later got "free" party membership as a gift. I can't see why it would be hard to give free memberships to all those that donated above a certain amount.

Bank account? Is that all sorted?

Nik

[Andy_R]

It's not all sorted yet, because we haven't yet elected a treasurer to set it up, it's a fairly quick process once that's done though.

Paypal donations might be troublesome, since we need to check that donors are allowed to donate according to the Electoral Commission rules, which requires gathering a bit of information about them - again it's the treasurer's job to find out if (and how) we can do this legally. We do have a pledges thread though, where you can make a promise to go through the donation process once we have the process set up.

[NikTheGeek]

Just a quick question re the nominations and voting etc. Is anyone going to check what the candidates have said is actually true? Whilst I don't wish to pick on any one person, if they say they have certain qualifications and experiences and we vote based on that, what if it isn't true???

Nik

[rancidpunk]

I've got an LGV driving licence you can check>

[epriezka]

Just a quick question re the nominations and voting etc. Is anyone going to check what the candidates have said is actually true? Whilst I don't wish to pick on any one person, if they say they have certain qualifications and experiences and we vote based on that, what if it isn't true???

Nik

Are you worried that one of the candidates is Jeffrey Archer in disguise? But seriously, I understand your concern. You raise a legitimate point. The trouble is that we're building an organization from the ground up and that means there will need to be a lot of trust in the absence of procedures and internal controls. One of the reasons I offered to stand as Treasurer was that I was aware of how a body of volunteers like this, if lacking professional experience, could end up with lots of financial controls in the wrong places, and none in the right places. I'm already thinking of where to make tough calls between the natural desire to raise as much money as possible, and the need to ensure we respect the law and have adequate internal controls to safeguard both our funds and the interests of our volunteers.

Everybody is a volunteer. A bit of investigative journalism to confirm everybody's background would do no harm and may do some good, but the problem is not whether it would be nice to do it, but who is going to do it. I can understand why nobody has undertaken the task so far - if it turns out the candidates are honest, there would be nothing gained from the exercise. Given that you're the first person to flag the need, how about making a start by asking each of the candidates a few questions? If you wanted to keep it simple, you could create a new forum thread for the purpose. All I ask is that you try to be polite and fair to all candidates. In our hurry, nobody has talked about hustings or anything like that, so I see no reason why candidates would object to receiving and responding to a few straightforward queries about what they stand for, who they are, and where they come from. That would help you to sanity check for any inconsistencies in what they say, and make it easier to identify what to do next in order to perform more detailed checks on their background.