Amendments for vote at September meeting

[Alex Dehnert]

Hi folks,
At our meeting last week, five amendments were submitted, and will
therefore be up for vote at the September meeting. To help the
membership decide how to vote, we’ve prepared a Voter Guide.

You can find it, with links to all the amendments, at:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14rXfd6ADrsV2pGDuiewmSY_G-EGc_REzZsCzza1QOzk/preview?tab=t.0


All of these amendments are designed to streamline the bylaw amendment
process. While there’s flexibility in how to apply them, a vision that
we’ve floated within the bylaws working group is to consider routine
amendments twice a year (52B1 below). Each batch of amendments could be
discussed in a special meeting by those interested in the subject, and
then voted on online or in-person (52B3) when members have time
(similarly to how we conduct the board election). This approach isn’t
required by the amendments; urgent amendments can be considered sooner
(and 52A5 allows forcing this) and voting in general meetings would
remain an option. In addition, amendments would require 5 endorsers to
go before membership (52B2), to ensure a basic level of support. These
changes have been divided up into several amendments, to enable separate
adoption if the membership doesn’t support all the proposals. (If
there's broad support, we could also adopt them all at once as "consent
calendar" items[1], as we did with some non-controversial items in July.)

We encourage people to discuss these amendments on the
DSNC-Di...@googlegroups.com mailing list before the September
meeting. The Bylaws Working Group does not necessarily endorse any
particular one of these amendments.

I've included below a brief list of all the amendments (not necessarily
in the order we'll be voting on them), but please see the Voter Guide
for more details. All five are sponsored by Alex Dehnert and Chris
Beland. (To the best of my knowledge, no other amendments were submitted
in writing at the August meeting. Please let me know if I'm mistaken.)

Thanks,
Alex

Amendments:
52A5: Members May Add Questions or Candidates to the Agenda for Any Meeting
52B0: Clerical Amendment Separating Article 10 (Amendments) into
Numbered Parts
52B1: Bylaw Amendments up to Six Months after Submission
52B2: Bylaw Amendments Require Endorsement by Five Members
52B3: Allowing Online Voting for Bylaw Amendments


[1] https://groups.google.com/g/dsnc-discussion/c/kMjeZNRnwSc/m/AlBCSBWfAQAJ