ideas-groupDecisionMaking-plan11-bylaws-electCommission

The Elect Commissions and the Augmented Elect Commission

The Augmented Elect Commission is one of the three legislative houses. The Augmented Elect Commission is itself made of three components: the Primary Elect Commission, the External Elect Commission, and the councils.

The elect commissions

Each elect commission is a small group of elected representatives. There are two elect commissions; the Primary Elect Commission and the External Elect Commission. The External Elect Commission handles external affairs, and the Primary Elect Commission handles everything else (see Division between internal and external functions).

Each member of the External Elect Commission is also a member of the Primary Elect Commission.

How the commissioners are chosen

The commissioners are directly elected by the voters by reweighted range voting. The necessary and sufficient condition for any elgible voter to be included on the ballot is self-nomination. Self-nominations may be withdrawn. The Office of Procedure shall announce the self-nominations as they come in.

There is an election to the elect commission after one electoral cycle duration has elapsed since the previous election. A measure to call early elections may be adopted by the Forum, in which case an election happens sooner. All of the commissioners are replaced each election.

On each ballot, two range values may be assigned to each candidate, one value for their suitability for the Primary Elect Commission, and the other value for their suitability for the External Elect Commission. First, reweighted range voting is used to select the Primary Elect Commissioners based upon the Primary Elect Commission suitability values. Next, all candidates except for the new Primary Elect Commissioners are removed, and finally, reweighted range voting is used to select the External Elect Commissioners based upon the External Elect Commission suitability values (out of the pool of the Primary Elect Commissioners).

How many commissioners are there?

The number of members in the Primary Elect Commission is given by: makeOdd(min(P,floor(sqrt(n)))), where makeOdd(x) = x - mod(x+1,2), P = 11, and n is the effective group size).

The number of members in the External Elect Commission is given by: makeOdd(floor(primarySz/2)), where primarySz is the number of members in the Primary Elect Commission as given above, and makeOdd(), P, and n are as above; except that, if the previous formula yields a number less than 3, then the External Elect Commission doesn't separately exist (in this case, the Primary Elect Commission also acts as the external election commission).

Existence of the elect commissions

As noted above, for small enough groups, the external elect commission is not separate from the primary elect commission.

For very small groups (when n is less than P, with n and P as defined above), there is no elect commission at all. In this case, when some role is given to the Elect Commissions or to the Elect Commissions and the Delegate Pyramids, then the Forum fulfills that role.

Rules of order

The proceeding of an Elect Commission are governed by the commission rules of order; except for the following additions and changes:

• final votes on main motions are not taken (instead, when a main motion would be put to a final vote, the question is instead put to the Augmented Elect Commission, and members of either the elect commission or the External Elect Commission vote on it as part of that body).
• the elect commission MUST have a roll call vote on any proposal passed by the Collective Council within 1 month. If 1 month goes by and no roll call vote in the elect commission has been taken on that proposal (or a germanely amended version of that proposal), the elect commission is called into special session and cannot adjourn or do other business until a roll call vote has been taken on that proposal (with quorum being met). After the vote has been taken, those votes are combined with the Collective Council votes and the total is taken to be an Augmented Elect Commission vote.

The augmented elect commission

The augmented elect commission is a deliberative body of which half of the votes come from the elect commission (or the External Elect Commission), and the other half from the councils.

The augmented elect commission does not deliberate, and is only put a question when a measure is sent by the elect commission (or the External Elect Commission). Depending on whether the measure came from the elect commission or the External Elect Commission, the members of one or the other of those commissions, but not both, may vote as part of the augmented elect commission on this measure.

Each primary elect commissioner (or external elect commissioner) possesses 1 vote in the augmented elect commission. Each council possesses a fractional vote in the augmented elect commission; the distribution of these votes are given in councils.

On measures which will probably substantially affect the relative power of the elect commission and the delegate commission, the councils composed of delegates may not cast votes.

No replacement

If a member becomes unavailable or is removed, they are not replaced until the next elect commission election.