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Note: a summary of this document may be found at The Short Version.
Note: this document is only a summary of the bylaws -- for clarification or in case of dispute, the actual bylaws, not this document, take precedence.
Temporary note: actually the previous is not yet true: in case i get hit by a bus, this version was written later than the bylaws and other overviews and is meant to replace them, but i havent gotten around to modifying them yet. Also, this "short version" turned into a long version because i added a bunch of details about the upcoming changes.
todo: write a TOC here
The Branch Democracy Rules are a set of procedures to allow a group of people to make collective decisions, elect officers, and resolve disputes.
Benefits of the system:
These rules can be used for groups of any size. For very small groups, note that if we say, for example, that there are seven members on the Board, three Judges, and three Chairpeople, this doesn't mean that 11 people are required; for example, a single person could hold two Board seats and also all three Chair positions and all three Judge positions.
Positions created by the system include:
A proposal that passes in the Forum or the Board is called a "Resolution". A Resolution that is not vetoed, or which overcomes the veto, is called an "Act". An Act is considered to be a valid collective decision of the group.
The Forum is a public bulletin board. Any voter can create a proposal for the Forum. Voters are encouraged to air their proposals informally before posting. Before being posted, each proposal is vetted by Juror Committee and, if relevant, a Standing Committee (see below).
When enough (see Voting Thresholds, below) people have voted 'yes' to a proposal, it passes. Or, when enough people have voted 'no' to a proposal, it fails. A proposal also fails if it has been sitting around for one week without passing. Except in special cases, a proposal cannot pass or fail until it has been standing for at least a week.
Anyone can also propose an 'Alternative' to an existing proposal. The group uses Score Voting (see How Score Voting Works, below), to choose between Alternatives, and then has a final yes/no vote on the winning Alternative.
If there are a lot of proposals, then there is a continually running reweighted score voting pre-vote to determine the 'top three' proposals "on the Floor" (e.g. under consideration) at any one time. Only these top three are then voted on.
Voters can 'proxy' their vote to another voter. This allows their proxy to vote for them. Proxies can themselves be re-proxied, e.g. Alice can proxy her vote to Bob who can proxy both his vote and Alice's proxy to Caroline. Proxies can be taken back at any time before a vote. Proxies are given per topical area (see Topical Areas, below).
Voters can post comments under proposals.
If the proper infrastructure exists to make this feasible, comments can themselves be voted on using Score Voting, and are ranked, to allow other voters to choose to read only the most important comments.
The function of the Committees is to filter and to improve proposals before they reach the Forum Floor.
A Committee examines the proposal and may make suggestions to the proposer to improve it. The Committee may take four possible actions with respect to a proposal: the Committee can reject a proposal, or send the proposal on to the Forum Floor, or add an Alternative to the proposal, or add a Report to the proposal. All actions are by >=75%. The Committee has one week to consider each proposal. If they take no action after one week, the proposer can remove the proposal from Committee and send it to the Forum Floor (although they can also choose to leave it in Committee for longer so as to further improve it).
Each proposal is examined by a Juror Committee in the relevant topical area before reaching the floor. A Juror Committee is composed like a Court (see below); it is randomly selected anew for each proposal from the pool of jurors eligible for the highest appeals level in that topical area so as to satisfy the board-coloring rule (see below). Each Juror Committee is assigned three judges, who also vote.
If the voters wish, they can create one or more Standing Committees (see below) by passing a resolution to that effect in the Forum. A Standing Committee may be created for each topical area. At the time of creation, a Standing Committee is elected within the Forum (e.g. with the usage of proxied votes) using Score Voting. Once selected, the Standing Committe stays the way it is until the Forum passes a resolution to reconstitute it (at which time there is a new election for that committee), or to disband it. If there is a relevant Standing Committee in place, the top five proposals to the Forum (according to the pre-vote) are placed before the Standing Committee as a second filter before reaching the Floor. Standing committees function in addition to, not instead of, Juror Committees.
By majority vote, any proposal on the Forum Floor may also be Referred to Committee. There are two forms of Refer to Committee; in one form, the proposal is sent back to the Standing Committee for the relevant topic, but with more time given to consider the proposal and create Alternatives and/or a Report. In another form, a Special Committee is created just for this proposal; an election is held immediately to constitute the Special Committee. A Refer to Committee motion always specifies a time limit for the committee; if this time limit passes, the proposal returns to the Forum Floor. A Committee considering a Referred Proposal may not reject it, but may only take the other three actions (add an Alternative, add or modify a Report, send it back to the Floor).
"rules": Any written rules that actively govern the organization, including the organization's Declaration or Articles or Charter or similar document establishing the organization's purpose, if it has one, these Bylaws, the Acts, any Ratified Contracts, any Judicial Procedures, and any Regulations.
"rights": In this document, "rights" refers only to procedural rights or to negative rights, not to positive substantive rights. For example, a proposal to provide health care to all members would not, in the language of this document, be referred to as a "right to health care," and could not be passed via Found Rights, nor would a proposal to stop providing this be subject to the higher voting threshold to restrict rights.
"unanimity": in this document, unless explicitly specified otherwise, unanimity means after removing abstainers, e.g. if one or more voters abstain, but everyone who does vote votes for the resolution, then the decision is unanimous
There are different voting thresholds depending on the type of measure.
A veto (see below) requires greater than 50%.
A measure to deficit spend (or borrow money), increase member dues, or to restrict the rights of the members requires at least 63%. A measure to decrease spending or to decrease the power of the organization with respect to the members requires greater than 50%. An ordinary measure requires at least 60%.
A measure to Ratify a contract with another entity requires at least 2/3s. A measure to expand the franchise (that is, the set of voters) requires at least 2/3s. A measure to expel a voter after they have been convicted in a trial of an expulsive offense requires at least 2/3s. A measure to make a Temporary Exception to the Bylaws requires at least 2/3s. A measure to amend the Bylaws is special, see below.
TODO: mb change to 2/3s and 3/4s for the Board, so that the ordinary measures are really a supermajority
No cost, fee or penalty, either direct or indirect (such as increased chance of jury duty), which may discourage eligible members from voting, shall be attached to voting.
Each voter submits a ballot which, for each candidate, indicates a score of either 0, 1, or 2 (0 is the default, used if they don't express anything for some candidate).
Each ballot is given an initial "weight" of 1.
Repeat the following P times, where P is the number of winners to be chosen:
1. The weighted scores on the ballots are summed for each candidate, thus obtaining that candidate's total score.
2. The candidate with the highest total score (who has not already won), is declared a winner.
3a. For single-seat elections where there is an incumbent, or for votes on issues in which there is a 'no action' choice (which we treat as a virtual 'incumbent'): if the winner is other than the incumbent, hold a runoff between the winner and the incumbent (note that you may not simply reuse the vote counts from the initial voting, you must actually hold a runoff, unless of course the incumbent and the winner were the only two candidates in the first round). In order to unseat the incumbent, the challenger must get >=60% of the vote.
3b. For multiseat elections: When a voter "gets her way" in the sense that a candidate she rated highly wins, her ballot weight is reduced so that she has less influence on later choices of winners. To accomplish that, each ballot is given a new weight = 1/(1+SUM/2), where SUM is the sum of the scores that ballot gives to the winners-so-far (if one person won multiple seats, they contribute multiple times to SUM).
In case of a tie in a single-seat election, the incumbent wins, unless the incumbent is not one of the tied candidates, in which case the incumbent chooses which of the tied candidates become the successor. In case of a tie in a multiseat election for the last seat, the incumbent wins, unless none or more than one of the tied candidates in an incumbent; if more than one, then the chair choose among the tied incumbents, if none, then the chairs choose among the tied candidates.
In multiseat elections, in some cases the bylaws may specify that each candidate may only hold one seat. In such cases, in 3b, candidates which have already won a seat are removed from future consideration. Otherwise, they stay active.
(note: some of the wording in this section is taken from http://www.rangevoting.org/RRV.html ; note that in this document, the term 'score voting' in a multiseat context means what is sometimes termed 'reweighted score voting')
The electoral cycle time is 4 years.
Chairs are elected for a fixed term of the electoral cycle time.
Delegates can face a recall election at any time, and in addition face an election whenever the time since their last election (including recall elections) exceeds the electoral cycle time.
A new budget must be proposed by the CEOi whenever the time since the least budget proposal, which did not end in a veto by the CEOi, exceeds the electoral cycle time.
In the Forum, a hybrid public/secret ballot system is used to deter vote buying. Give each person two ballots: a secret ballot and a public ballot.
Everyone can see which way they vote their public ballot. If they hold proxies from others, the proxies' secret ballots follow their secret ballot and the proxies' public ballots follow their public ballot. The originators of the proxies don't ever find out which way their secret ballots were cast.
To tally the vote, for each candidate, you sum the secret ballots for that candidate, then you sum the public ballots for that candidate, then you multiply these two sums together, then you take the square root.
The Topical Areas are used to allow Committees and Courts to specialize, and to allow proxy votes to be delegated per-topic.
Initially, the Topical Areas are:
This list can be changed via an ordinary Act.
The Board is composed of seven Delegates.
Each Delegate represents a Constituency, which is a group of voters who have chosen to come together and select their own Delegate. Any group of members may join together to form a new Constituency; the organization may not constrain the formation of new Constituencies, or the joining or leaving of members from Constituencies. Some or all members of a Constituency might themselves be Delegates, re-delegating the votes that they themselves were delegated.
Constituencies have a limit on the number of members whose votes they can make use of. The more votes the Constituency is making use of, the less members it is allowed to make use of. This is because the individual members of smaller Constituencies have more power to hold their Delegate accountable, so we insist that Delegates who are being given a lot of power (votes) have small constituencies. This is intended to encourage chained delegation, forming a pyramid with larger constituencies at the bottom of the pyramid (which have many members), who in turn delegate their votes to smaller constituencies at the top of the pyramid (which, by virtue of their re-delegated votes, have more votes, but fewer members); contrast this system to the alternative of allowing massively popular Delegates to escape accountability by having very large consistencies. If a Constituency has more members than its limit, only some of the members, those with the most votes to give, are counted towards the Constituency's total. The formula for the member number limit is constituency_member_limit = 7^((1 + sqrt(1 + 8*(log(electorate_size/constituency_votes)/log(7))))/2), where electorate_size is the total number of voters in the organization, and constituency_votes is the total number of votes controlled by this constituency (see [1]