Establishing Rules of Quorum and Democratic Procedure

Exactly how will we make any decisions? Will we be a democratic effort with each member of a work group entitled to an equal vote, will non-group members have any say, will the public, or will we have executive oversight boards and team facilitators making all the final decisions?

These are things we need to decide if we are to go forward productively.

I had suggested in another thread (or two) a system by which we may democratically move forward. With membership of working groups in odd numbers, only the level of consensus would be needed to be decided for work group progress to be made internally without need of a team leader. Though I'm not opposed to the proper role of team facilitators, if we opt to have them then their function must be defined. With working group forums open to the public view, we could incorporate public polling into our group consensus. The group votes that they're ready to submit their work to the public. Everyone (specific working group members included) then has a chance to vote on what they've offered, again only the level of consensus would need to be decided.

If public involvement in the production of our working groups is deemed to be too interfering, we could simply have the working group vote they are ready to submit their work, and then all members of all of our working groups could vote, without the public's direct input. In this way, we could rely on our fellow group members to treat the material with all proper gravity, and to respect the group's work and understand that the debate is open to perusal if anyone does hold objections. We could have a 3, 5 or 7 day window for voting.

I'm inclined to lean towards no generic public interference, as their voting would be unreliable at this point, and I think if the whole membership of our group at large had a chance to vote on each working group's work, then that would be democratic enough. Additionally we would maintain working group membership at workable and odd-numbered levels (to facilitate ingroup polling), and any member of the group at large could call for the removal of any member from any group at any time, again we would just need to vote in the same way and with an established level of consensus.

I am not pushing this system, it is just the only way of proceeding in a democratic manner that I could think up. I am more than open to other ideas. Please suggest and discuss, so that we may move forward.

I like this. Having the entire group voting one one WorkGroup's process becomes untenable at a certain point. As long as the WorkGroup reports back once a week or so to the main group, for a temperature check, we'll all stay on point. Did I really just use two stupid analogies in one sentence?

I really like your ideas and want to discuss them further.

I expect the public will be eager to provide input on everything that is done in this working group. My own personal vision for the members of this working group is to be admnistrative assistances to the public who comments, collating their input into a single easily communicable message. That will necessarily need to rely on polling, on discussions with experts, and on continual presentation and feedback from the public on changes that are made.

In my mind, if we attempt to do work inside this working group without consulting the public, then at what point is it truly "ready to be presented"? On the day the group thinks it is finished, and the document presented, there will inevitably be further input that needs addressing.

For this reason, I view our purpose, the content we produce, and the groups themselves as living on a continuum, with the only thing defining a "finished" document is a date and time on which it is viewed. I believe this was the intent of the founding fathers, that laws should always be subject to change, and therefore so should anything we produce here. Managing that change will be an important part of our discussions here
and is why I am leaning toward public involvement.

I am curious what others here think about this topic.

DJequalityNash wrote:Exactly how will we make any decisions? Will we be a democratic effort with each member of a work group entitled to an equal vote, will non-group members have any say, will the public, or will we have executive oversight boards and team facilitators making all the final decisions?

These are things we need to decide if we are to go forward productively.

I had suggested in another thread (or two) a system by which we may democratically move forward. With membership of working groups in odd numbers, only the level of consensus would be needed to be decided for work group progress to be made internally without need of a team leader. Though I'm not opposed to the proper role of team facilitators, if we opt to have them then their function must be defined. With working group forums open to the public view, we could incorporate public polling into our group consensus. The group votes that they're ready to submit their work to the public. Everyone (specific working group members included) then has a chance to vote on what they've offered, again only the level of consensus would need to be decided.

If public involvement in the production of our working groups is deemed to be too interfering, we could simply have the working group vote they are ready to submit their work, and then all members of all of our working groups could vote, without the public's direct input. In this way, we could rely on our fellow group members to treat the material with all proper gravity, and to respect the group's work and understand that the debate is open to perusal if anyone does hold objections. We could have a 3, 5 or 7 day window for voting.

I'm inclined to lean towards no generic public interference, as their voting would be unreliable at this point, and I think if the whole membership of our group at large had a chance to vote on each working group's work, then that would be democratic enough. Additionally we would maintain working group membership at workable and odd-numbered levels (to facilitate ingroup polling), and any member of the group at large could call for the removal of any member from any group at any time, again we would just need to vote in the same way and with an established level of consensus.

I am not pushing this system, it is just the only way of proceeding in a democratic manner that I could think up. I am more than open to other ideas. Please suggest and discuss, so that we may move forward.

Teri Bidwell wrote:I really like your ideas and want to discuss them further.

I expect the public will be eager to provide input on everything that is done in this working group. My own personal vision for the members of this working group is to be admnistrative assistances to the public who comments, collating their input into a single easily communicable message. That will necessarily need to rely on polling, on discussions with experts, and on continual presentation and feedback from the public on changes that are made.

In my mind, if we attempt to do work inside this working group without consulting the public, then at what point is it truly "ready to be presented"? On the day the group thinks it is finished, and the document presented, there will inevitably be further input that needs addressing.

For this reason, I view our purpose, the content we produce, and the groups themselves as living on a continuum, with the only thing defining a "finished" document is a date and time on which it is viewed. I believe this was the intent of the founding fathers, that laws should always be subject to change, and therefore so should anything we produce here. Managing that change will be an important part of our discussions here
and is why I am leaning toward public involvement.

I am curious what others here think about this topic.

Teri - I assume that you are referring specifically to the Oversight Group?

My impression is that DJ's model represents the overall structure of multiple workgroups. For example, we don't ALL need to vote on what the PR workgroup does. We don't need to micromanage each other. I'm fine with a weekly update/temperature check from PR. I don't think that every single person here needs to be voting as to whether PR decides to release a canned statement to the press, for example.