Any member can put forward a proposal. It should state clearly its intention eg ..."to make a membership rule requiring all members motorcycles to have at least one wheel..." and ask members to discuss the proposal. The proposal may and probably will) be modified during this discussion.
The mechanics of vote will be handled in accord with the paragraphs below.
1) AFTER the discussion period, if it has been determined that a
proposal is agreed upon, a call for votes may be posted. The proposer
should nominate a member as the vote taker. The vote taker will be
responsible for tallying and publishing the result of the vote. There
should be minimal delay between the end of the discussion period and
the issuing of a call for votes. The call for votes should include
clear instructions for how to cast a vote. It must be as clearly
explained and as easy to do to cast a vote for creation as against
it, and vice versa. e.g. Post a message to the vote taker with the
subject line "Re: One wheel - VOTE" and the single line
message "YES" if in favour of the proposal or "NO"
if against it.
A suggested voting format is available from Phil
Dorman.
2) The voting period should last for at least 7 days and no more than 31 days, no matter what the preliminary results of the vote are. The exact date that the voting period will end should be stated in the call for votes. Only votes that arrive prior to this date will be counted.
3) A couple of repeats of the call for votes may be posted during the vote, provided that they contain similar clear, unbiased instructions for casting a vote as the original, and provided that it is really a repeat of the call for votes on the SAME proposal (see #5 below). Partial vote results should NOT be included; only a statement of the specific proposal, that a vote is in progress on it, and how to cast a vote. It is permitted (but not required) to post a "mass acknowledgement" in which all the names of those from whom votes have been received are posted, as long as no indication is made of which way anybody voted until the voting period is officially over.
4) ONLY votes E-MAILED to the vote taker will count. Votes posted to
the list for any reason (including inability to get e-mail to the
vote taker) and proxy votes (such as having a mailing list maintainer
claim a vote for each member of the list) will not be counted. Proxy
votes for off-line members will be accepted but must be verified by
the vote taker. ie (by checking the Members list.
Phone votes, snail mail votes and other 'invisible' votes must not be accepted.
5) Votes may not be transferred to other, similar proposals. A vote shall count only for the EXACT proposal that it is a response to. A vote should be in response to only one proposal.
(6) Votes MUST be explicit; they should be of the form "I vote for the proposal" or "I vote against the proposal". The wording doesn't have to be exact, it just needs to be unambiguous. In particular, statements of the form "I would vote for this proposal if..." should be considered comments only and not counted as votes.
7) A vote should be run only for a single proposal. Attempts to create multiple resolutions should be handled by running multiple parallel votes rather than one vote to create all of the resolutions.
1) At the completion of the voting period, the vote taker must post the vote tally and the e-mail addresses and (if available) names of the voters received to the list. The tally should include a statement of which way each voter voted so that the results can be verified.
2) AFTER the vote result is posted, there will be a 7 day waiting period, beginning when the voting results actually appear in the list, during which the members will have a chance to correct any errors in the voter list or the voting procedure.
3) AFTER the waiting period, and if there were no serious objections that might invalidate the vote, AND at least 1/2 of the total number of valid votes received are in favor of the proposal, the resolution will be entered into the resolutions list on the Resolutions Page.
4) A proposal which has failed under point (3) above should not again be brought up for discussion until at least six months have passed from the close of the vote. This limitation does not apply to proposals which never went to vote or polls that were cancelled or invalidated.