Draft proposed reorg meeting rules, tentative reorg schedule, and draft revised virtual meeting rules

[Scott Forbes]

Hello Democrats,

It’s 15 days until the election, 16 days until the GOP's coup attempt, and tentatively 47 days until the 2020 KCDCC reorganization meeting. As discussed at our last BRC meeting, we need to recommend a set of proposed rules for the reorganization meeting, which the Exec Board would approve later this month and then would be proposed to the PCOs at reorg.

As I understand it, the tentative schedule for the reorg meeting and related events is as follows:

Saturday 11/7: Paper mail sent to each PCO with instructions for attending the reorganization meeting. The mail will include the schedule below along with a voter-specific code for each PCO that will be used to “sign” electronic ballots at reorg. We will, for the first time in goodness knows how long, comply with bylaw § 6.3 regarding sending notice of PCO meetings via U.S. Mail.

Saturday 11/21: Initial pre-registration deadline for candidates running for KCDCC officer positions, which is effectively the deadline for inclusion in the KCDCC equivalent of the Voter’s Pamphlet. We will publish on kcdems.org statements and videos from candidates who file by this date, and then email PCOs (where we have their email addresses) to let them know and publish on social media. Candidates do not have to pre-register and can file to run at any time, up to and including on the floor at reorg.

Saturday 11/28: Pre-registration deadline for participating in the KCDCC candidate forum.

Tuesday 12/1: PCO inauguration ceremony, candidate forum, and virtual meeting practice run #1. Tentatively this is a 2.5 hour meeting with 15-30 minutes of welcoming PCOs on the first day of their term, an hour for candidates in contested officer races, and then 15-45 minutes of training PCOs on how to participate and vote at a virtual meeting, with the expectation that 90% of PCOs will be trained in the first 15 minutes and then we’ll need to help the remaining PCOs individually. Volunteers very much wanted.

Saturday 12/5: 10am-noon: Virtual meeting practice run #2.

noon-3pm: Reorganization meeting.

Saturday 12/12: “How to Run a Virtual Meeting" training for aspiring LPO chairs, which includes material from last year’s parliamentary procedure training plus our recent hard-earned experience with virtual meetings. We will be asking our current LPO chairs to pass along lessons learned and ideally to participate in delivering the training.

In conjunction with all this, please review the draft reorg meeting rules and draft revisions to the virtual meeting rules at these links:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17N2yh2CcYcDl_ksdQ2rOVqbi6m1IVfZ0SyCo1PGyro4/edit?ts=5f84a846#

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O_PWAzuS17Mn7jMh7MpDmOvGRz2b9nNp9vZTjPF_YIE/edit?ts=5f8c9a61

I’ve tried to simplify the virtual meeting rules from what we initially recommended back in March, and to reconcile them with our current meeting practices—at the time we were essentially guessing at how virtual meetings might work, and our current practices have evolved somewhat (and at the time we needed to quickly pass something to invoke bylaw § 11.4 and authorize virtual meetings).

I’m ambivalent about whether to call a BRC meeting solely for the purpose of reviewing and approving the above two documents, because I think we can probably achieve 95% of that meeting (if not 100%) using email and the comment sidebar in Google Docs—but if there’s any feedback / suggestions / comments that look like something we might need to vote on, I may schedule a quick call next weekend.

Thanks,

— Scott