8.4 Constitutional amendment

[JohnB]

The constitution currently allows for amendments to be made to the constitution by ratification in a full vote of all members, of amendments developed by the Board. The implication is that a simple majority of those voting (not necessarily of the total party membership) is sufficient to pass such an amendment.

I propose a change to this, to require a supermajority of e.g. two-thirds of those voting to pass amendments to the constitution. This is an idea which personally I could argue either for or against, but which I feel is worth discussion and I would like to see put forward to membership vote.

The rationale I have for making this change begins with a criticism I heard a number of times when the current arrangements were brought in, that the current process of amendment where the Board control the final wording entirely and the vote is put to members at a time of the Board's choosing, leads to a situation where it is very unlikely that any constitutional amendment which gets that far would not be passed, perhaps even if there was substantial minority opposition to it. In effect it becomes merely a rubber-stamp vote, giving the appearance of democratic transparency, but not actually delivering anything meaningful unless there is a genuine prospect that some amendments might be voted down from time to time. At the present time, no amendments that have been put have ever been voted down by the membership, and I do feel that pattern shows that there's an issue here.

So my thinking is that if as many as one-third or more of members are voting against an amendment, then that could be regarded as more than sufficient to say that the amendment needs reconsideration, and that the Board should take it back and work on it some more until there is a sufficient consensus of members to pass it. This is not an amendment that would have made sense earlier in our history, when the constitution was less mature and it needed to be fairly easy to change; but I believe that we will reach a point (if not now, then in future) where our constitution is mature and robust enough that it does not need to change as often, and that requiring a super-majority to do so will become valid.

If the present Board do not wish to take this to membership vote (as I hope will occur), then as an alternative I will be arguing within the Board that we should be more willing to take forward credible amendments that are proposed:

even if we the board at the time do not ourselves agree with the proposed change

bearing in mind we can always accompany a proposed amendment with a notice of whether the Board recommend, are neutral, or are opposed to it, and let our members decide. That would also help create the possibility that amendments might either succeed or fail, and that it isn't necessarily a racing certainty before the votes are even collected or counted.

In a similar vein, I feel there could be room to extend the options for amendments to reach the membership vote stage, and that we might in future develop a route for member-proposed amendments not sponsored by the Board; I have seen other organizations where there is a Board-sponsored route as we have, but where a determined member with some level of support can effectively propose an amendment "from the floor" whether or not the Board support it. That is something I think that I would support, however perhaps only if the hurdle to adoption was a super-majority, as otherwise it is all too easy to see a damaging or simply badly-worded amendment proposed against Board recommendations scraping through a contentious member vote, when it really should be improved before being adopted.

[ajehals]

My personal positions on this are that:

1. The board should not have a monopoly on determining which amendments to the constitution should be considered.

2. I would also support the requirement of a super-majority being required for an amendment to pass, but not quite yet, I don't think the constitution as it currently stands is mature or even entirely suitable for the party, (but I also don't see it as a priority issue).

3. I would like to see a minimum turn out requirement for any constitutional amendments, but again, as above, not yet.

Essentially, looking at the last set of constitutional amendments, they passed with at least 80% of the vote, but with a turnout that looks to be less than 25%.

So, whilst I agree that an amendment will likely be required in the future to ensure stability, I don't think the time is now and I think the issue is one of participation, not vote result as such.

[azrael]

Taking John's point that members generally vote in favour of amendments they are offered, I would worry that if we were in a position that *any* proposal offered had to be put to members to vote, that the quality of the constitution would degrade.

The original purpose of the Board was to take the lead on the constitution and free up members from having to regularly get bogged down with this detail (admittedly a previous constitution did require regular updates which we wanted to avoid being a distraction).

I'm not actually opposed to the idea of their being a route by which proposals could bypass the Board (we need to be careful what that route is) ... but that does raise the concern that the Board ought to be a reflection of the opinion of members. If the Board don't agree with a proposal, and yet a sufficiently large enough group of members are able to pass an amendment the Board refused to support, then there are bigger problems.

If the Board refuse to support an amendment, how do we ensure it goes through the same (hopefully) rigorous process as amendments the Board do support?

Should the Board be obliged to give *every* amendment the same treatment, yet when it comes to vote time the %age needed to pass an amendment is higher for amendments the Board disagree with?

[Andy_R]

I think it's important to remember the board are democratically elected to be a 'safe pair of hands' when it comes to the constitution. We seem to be looking at this from the angle of protecting the Party from a potential vexatious or renegade board that suppresses good ideas, when we already have a mechanism to deal with that - the vote of no confidence. If the board has 'gone bad', the membership shouldn't be overruling them on a case by case basis, they should be kicking them out and appointing better ones. The real issue here is highly unlikely to be a renegade board, it's far more likely to be a well-meaning member who thinks they have found 100 things that should be changed, or a hostile member trying to gum the works up, or just a sore loser wanting us to keep voting on their idea until we give in and vote yes.

A process of thinning out constitutional amendments is required - otherwise we could see every motion not passed unanimously thrown back to another vote by the losing side, or we could end up voting on mutually exclusive amendments that both pass. The board are the democratically elected to be a 'safe pair of hands' that do this thinning out process. The reason we shouldn't allow them to be overruled is the Peniel Pentecostal Church issue (where allegedly several hundred members of an evangelical group all joined the small local conservative party in the same safe seat, giving them sufficient power to choose the next MP).

[Drew3000]

I suppose I don't know if the 1/3rd thing is a good idea on the gournds that it could potentially be obstructionist. It heads toward a consensus path, which can often work, but also allows a minority to hold things up.

[liamreed]

I'd like to see the following;

8.4 The Board is responsible for proposing constitutional amendments and presenting them for ratification by a full vote of members at such times as they feel appropriate and as outlined by the Board's Code of Practice.

To

8.4 The Board is responsible for proposing constitutional amendments and presenting them for ratification by a full vote of members in a timely manner but not so often to cause an inconvenience to the party.

8.4.1 Constitutional amendments, as proposed by the membership, must undergo seconding by at least one Party member in good standing.

8.4.2 Constitutional amendments, that have been seconded by a member in good standing, must be put to the membership for ratification although the board of governors retain the right to supply an accompanying report to the membership outlining recommendations.

I personally do not like the code of practice being referenced in the constitution as its not agreed upon by the membership

[azrael]

I'd like to see the following;

8.4 The Board is responsible for proposing constitutional amendments and presenting them for ratification by a full vote of members at such times as they feel appropriate and as outlined by the Board's Code of Practice.

To

8.4 The Board is responsible for proposing constitutional amendments and presenting them for ratification by a full vote of members in a timely manner but not so often to cause an inconvenience to the party.

8.4.1 Constitutional amendments, as proposed by the membership, must undergo seconding by at least one Party member in good standing.

8.4.2 Constitutional amendments, that have been seconded by a member in good standing, must be put to the membership for ratification although the board of governors retain the right to supply an accompanying report to the membership outlining recommendations.

I personally do not like the code of practice being referenced in the constitution as its not agreed upon by the membership

Your first clause there is too vague to be useful. Without a definition of what a timely manner is, or what qualifies as not being 'so often' this ends up being at the discretion of the Board to interpret which makes no functional difference. This would be better (as a proposal) with hard defined time constraints - at which point I personally would say it becomes too rigid and inflexible for me to support.

The next two clauses are essentially a single item - a means by which members can get proposals voted on by-passing a Board that doesn't want them voted on - so I will deal with them together.

Firstly, the principle of it seems sound, letting members have a say in how the Party operates. But far more detail is required as to how this would work before I could say if I agreed with it or not.

Firstly is 1 single other member agreeing with something when a clause can't get the agreement of 7 Governors a sufficient barrier?

What is the process for refining these suggestions? If Member A proposes something, Member B seconds, can Member A then tweak and improve the wording without subsequent agreement from Member B?
What if Member C agrees but wants a tweak to the wording that Member A doesn't want but Member B does? Do B and C override A? Can B withdraw support for the proposal and instead second a totally new proposal from Member C that is essentially an improved version of Member A's proposal?

At what point does a member's proposal get voted on? Does it wait until the next set proposed by the Board, or is it forced to member vote sooner than that? If the former, what if the Board never bring forward another proposal in order to avoid the member proposal being voted upon?

What if 10 member proposals go to a vote that contradict each other? Is the Board allowed to construct the vote that it becomes a 'pick one of these 10' or does each have to be voted on separately? If the former, what stops the Board constructing vote questions in ways to minimise the chance of member proposals being accepted?

What if member proposals are so vague they introduce confusion into the constitution? Currently the Board interpret such things - are the Board allowed to interpret clauses added they originally didn't agree with (given that they may interpret it to not do what the original member proposing it wanted it to do)?

Is it worth putting in complicated processes to by-pass the Board? Either the members have a Board they want, or the members remove one or more members of the Board to get the Board they want. If anything I'd say provide a mechanism (not in the constitution, as that has a vonc mechanism) by which members can seek out other members to build the necessary 10% to vonc an official they want removed.

Finally the purpose of the code of practice (COP) is NOT to provide a set of constraints on what the Board can do or how they do it - such things should be in the constitution. Instead the COP provides a means by which the Board can publish how it chooses to operate with regard to things that are at its discretion. So the constitution shouldn't require the Board put up constitutional amendment votes on a set schedule - so as something left to the discretion of the Board there would be essentially no information to members unless the Board chose to give any. By referring to the COP the constitution says 'The Board can do this how it likes, but it must tell members how it is doing it'. There are many cases in which this is the right approach

[liamreed]

What is the process for refining these suggestions? If Member A proposes something, Member B seconds, can Member A then tweak and improve the wording without subsequent agreement from Member B?

Firstly in reference to refinement don't you think that person B would suggest the tweaks before seconding the amendment?

What if Member C agrees but wants a tweak to the wording that Member A doesn't want but Member B does? Do B and C override A? Can B withdraw support for the proposal and instead second a totally new proposal from Member C that is essentially an improved version of Member A's proposal?

If I remember rightly there was a multiple choice question for one amendment a few years ago so I would batch the amendments for each part and go down that route.

Can B withdraw support for the proposal and instead second a totally new proposal from Member C that is essentially an improved version of Member A's proposal?

As per the constitution no process is currently active for a person to withdraw their support for candidates so perhaps that should be added to section 9.

At what point does a member's proposal get voted on? Does it wait until the next set proposed by the Board, or is it forced to member vote sooner than that? If the former, what if the Board never bring forward another proposal in order to avoid the member proposal being voted upon?

I think some form time constraint should be added something like the amendments should be prepared to be put to the members as a batch at least once a quarter?

What if 10 member proposals go to a vote that contradict each other? Is the Board allowed to construct the vote that it becomes a 'pick one of these 10' or does each have to be voted on separately? If the former, what stops the Board constructing vote questions in ways to minimise the chance of member proposals being accepted?

If the board was to construct new amendments to "water-down" the votes doesn't the voting system we use still find the one that the membership is most *agreeable* with and therefore I don't see how this can be abused.

What if member proposals are so vague they introduce confusion into the constitution?

Hopefully vague proposal will be tweaked before they are seconded but as I added into my proposal the board will have the right to supply recommendations which obviously carry the weight of the board but it is still down to the member to ignore it if they choose.

Is it worth putting in complicated processes to by-pass the Board? Either the members have a Board they want, or the members remove one or more members of the Board to get the Board they want. If anything I'd say provide a mechanism (not in the constitution, as that has a vonc mechanism) by which members can seek out other members to build the necessary 10% to vonc an official they want removed.

In some instances I don't think that a vonc is the right way to go about things should one sin outweigh one hundred good deeds? I think the vonc is only appropriate when there is a complete lack of confidence in the individual not just in relation to one issue.

I agree that certain things should be left with the board to choose to do how it wishes but i still think there should be some fail safes other than the vonc.

[azrael]

JohnB:

Are you able to take your original thoughts, and the discussion here, and wrap up a few sentences/paragraphs for one or more proposed amendments?

[JohnB]

JohnB:

Are you able to take your original thoughts, and the discussion here, and wrap up a few sentences/paragraphs for one or more proposed amendments?

Yes, I'll see what I can do.

This one got the more useful feedback, on both of the two I proposed I can see improvements which can be made to my original proposals based on the discussion, and in both cases I still believe there is something significant to address (not necessarily urgent), so I will try to fold the most useful suggestions in and come up with a next iteration of proposed amendment.

[azrael]

Given there's a Board meeting tomorrow, are there any further comments on this?

[azrael]

Progress on this has halted as per a vote recorded at http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/wiki/Boar ... ember_2012