Post by MTD on Jul 25, 2004 17:56:17 GMT -6
I threatened (see campechesteel.proboards15.com/index.cgi?board=Division&action=display&thread=1090793365) to present Bylaw change proposals. Here is the fourth, which has to do with a technicality of establishing a right to vote.
August "Proposition 4": Voter notifying Secretary in lieu of Colorado Springs.
Overview:
This one gets quite technical, but the net effect is to make life easier for people who want to hide their ages -- if they wish to vote in Division meetings.
Until recently, it was actually legally undefined who was eligible to vote in Division affairs. This division, like many others, had a customary practice of using exactly what the USFA Bylaws say about voter eligibility -- although those Bylaws were actually written for voting in national affairs, and were written based on the assumption of a vote late in the membership year. The Division Bylaws were recently amended to define rigorously who can and cannot vote in Division affairs. Only by going through the exact wording of both the USFA Bylaws and the Division Bylaws can you end up knowing the full details of how this works, but the bottom line (with how the USFA Bylaws read currently) is simple. If the Division vote is in or after February, exactly what is in the USFA Bylaws gets used -- and those Bylaws speak of 1) Coloado Springs considering you a member before February, 2) Colorado Springs considering you to be 18 before February, and 3) Colorado Springs reaching its understanding before February about whether (2) is true. But, what about Division votes before February? Well, the Division Bylaws result in the same conditions (1) through (3), but with the date of the vote substituted for "February". So far, so good. But, there's one fly in the ointment.
The USFA does not demand to know anybody's date of birth. (It may violate state laws for them to demand it.) But, if they don't know your date of birth, they don't let you take advantage of the privileges of being any particular age. They invented a system to deal with people who wished to vote in national affairs, were plenty old enough to do so, but didn't want to divulge their dates of birth. There is a little-known (even among some of the highest USFA administrators) field in the USFA database which is used to flag somebody as being old enough to vote even though the date of birth field is blank. The intent is that a member can call Colorado Springs, and convince the person on the phone that it would be the right thing to mark the member as eligible to vote. If this is done, the member appears on the national voter roll even though the data of birth is missing. By extension, if the Division has a vote in or after February, someone hiding his date of birth would still be eligible to vote as long as, before February started, he contacted Colorado Springs and arranged for his voting eligibility to be recorded. The problem involves Division votes before February!
The way the Division Bylaws say to interpret the USFA Bylaws, if there is a Division vote on October 1st, and if I conceal my date of birth, then I am still entitled to vote if before October 1st I contact Colorado Springs and persuade them that I should be considered old enough to vote on October 1st. But, if I were to call Colorado Springs and hold that discussion, I would be laughed at! Colorado Springs has no mechanism to record that somebody without a date of birth is old enough to vote by any date except February 1st!
So, this proposal creates an alternate mechanism by which a member can go through the motions of establishing the eligibility to vote without the need for peculiar cooperation from Colorado Springs. If the vote occurs before February, and if the prescription for eligibility calls for Colorado Springs to be made aware of something, then it would become an acceptable substitute to make the Division Secretary aware instead of Colorado Springs.
Note that this does not make it possible to present the Secretary with a completed membership application and payment one evening and vote the following morning, because the proposal specifically concerns satisfying conditions requiring conveying of information to Colorado Springs -- the conveying of payment to Colorado Springs is still a requirement. The best a new member could do is deliver the paperwork himself to Colorado Springs by the fastest possible method, and request that Colorado Springs respond with communication which could be used to demonstrate that the person has become a member. The Secretary could only serve as a surrogate for conveying the age information.
Current text:
Article VIII -- Meetings of the Members, Section 5 (Eligibility), part 3: "If USFA, INC. requirements specify that a member must act to cause a condition to be satisfied before a specific calendar date during the membership year, and the vote occurs prior to that date, then it shall be sufficient if the member is known to have caused the condition to be satisfied by the time of the vote."
Motion:
In the Gulf Coast Division Bylaws, in Article VIII, Section 5, replace part 3 with: "If USFA, INC. requirements specify that a member must act to cause a condition to be satisfied before a specific calendar date during the membership year, and the vote occurs prior to that date, then it shall be sufficient if the member is known to have caused the condition to be satisfied by the time of the vote. However, in such a case, if the specific condition is the communication of certain information to the National Office of USFA, INC, then it shall be sufficient if the member communicates the information instead to the Secretary of the Division."
August "Proposition 4": Voter notifying Secretary in lieu of Colorado Springs.
Overview:
This one gets quite technical, but the net effect is to make life easier for people who want to hide their ages -- if they wish to vote in Division meetings.
Until recently, it was actually legally undefined who was eligible to vote in Division affairs. This division, like many others, had a customary practice of using exactly what the USFA Bylaws say about voter eligibility -- although those Bylaws were actually written for voting in national affairs, and were written based on the assumption of a vote late in the membership year. The Division Bylaws were recently amended to define rigorously who can and cannot vote in Division affairs. Only by going through the exact wording of both the USFA Bylaws and the Division Bylaws can you end up knowing the full details of how this works, but the bottom line (with how the USFA Bylaws read currently) is simple. If the Division vote is in or after February, exactly what is in the USFA Bylaws gets used -- and those Bylaws speak of 1) Coloado Springs considering you a member before February, 2) Colorado Springs considering you to be 18 before February, and 3) Colorado Springs reaching its understanding before February about whether (2) is true. But, what about Division votes before February? Well, the Division Bylaws result in the same conditions (1) through (3), but with the date of the vote substituted for "February". So far, so good. But, there's one fly in the ointment.
The USFA does not demand to know anybody's date of birth. (It may violate state laws for them to demand it.) But, if they don't know your date of birth, they don't let you take advantage of the privileges of being any particular age. They invented a system to deal with people who wished to vote in national affairs, were plenty old enough to do so, but didn't want to divulge their dates of birth. There is a little-known (even among some of the highest USFA administrators) field in the USFA database which is used to flag somebody as being old enough to vote even though the date of birth field is blank. The intent is that a member can call Colorado Springs, and convince the person on the phone that it would be the right thing to mark the member as eligible to vote. If this is done, the member appears on the national voter roll even though the data of birth is missing. By extension, if the Division has a vote in or after February, someone hiding his date of birth would still be eligible to vote as long as, before February started, he contacted Colorado Springs and arranged for his voting eligibility to be recorded. The problem involves Division votes before February!
The way the Division Bylaws say to interpret the USFA Bylaws, if there is a Division vote on October 1st, and if I conceal my date of birth, then I am still entitled to vote if before October 1st I contact Colorado Springs and persuade them that I should be considered old enough to vote on October 1st. But, if I were to call Colorado Springs and hold that discussion, I would be laughed at! Colorado Springs has no mechanism to record that somebody without a date of birth is old enough to vote by any date except February 1st!
So, this proposal creates an alternate mechanism by which a member can go through the motions of establishing the eligibility to vote without the need for peculiar cooperation from Colorado Springs. If the vote occurs before February, and if the prescription for eligibility calls for Colorado Springs to be made aware of something, then it would become an acceptable substitute to make the Division Secretary aware instead of Colorado Springs.
Note that this does not make it possible to present the Secretary with a completed membership application and payment one evening and vote the following morning, because the proposal specifically concerns satisfying conditions requiring conveying of information to Colorado Springs -- the conveying of payment to Colorado Springs is still a requirement. The best a new member could do is deliver the paperwork himself to Colorado Springs by the fastest possible method, and request that Colorado Springs respond with communication which could be used to demonstrate that the person has become a member. The Secretary could only serve as a surrogate for conveying the age information.
Current text:
Article VIII -- Meetings of the Members, Section 5 (Eligibility), part 3: "If USFA, INC. requirements specify that a member must act to cause a condition to be satisfied before a specific calendar date during the membership year, and the vote occurs prior to that date, then it shall be sufficient if the member is known to have caused the condition to be satisfied by the time of the vote."
Motion:
In the Gulf Coast Division Bylaws, in Article VIII, Section 5, replace part 3 with: "If USFA, INC. requirements specify that a member must act to cause a condition to be satisfied before a specific calendar date during the membership year, and the vote occurs prior to that date, then it shall be sufficient if the member is known to have caused the condition to be satisfied by the time of the vote. However, in such a case, if the specific condition is the communication of certain information to the National Office of USFA, INC, then it shall be sufficient if the member communicates the information instead to the Secretary of the Division."