May 2013 Poll

National poll held during May/June 2013.

Poll notification sent to all owner addresses and notified on Central:

"Our Freegle Constitution presently has the following clauses:

7.3 Elections for Reps will be held annually.
7.4 Reps will serve a term of office of three years.
7.5 At the end of each year at least one third of Reps will stand down from office and/or come to the end of their term of office. The Reps will decide amongst themselves which Reps will stand down in the first and second year of Freegle's operation.

We have realised that these three clauses are contradictory in conferring a three-year term of office for each Rep, which can lead to some years there not being one third of Reps available to stand down. We feel that the principle of an annual three-Rep 'turnover' should take precedence over the enforced three-year term of office for each Rep. We propose that we change our constitution to read:

7.3 Elections for Reps will be held annually.
7.4 Delete this existing clause and renumber rest of this section.
7.4 (new numbering) At the end of each year, there will be elections for a minimum of three Reps. The vacancies will be created in the following order until there are a minimum of three:
i) Co-opted Reps,
ii) Reps who wish to retire early,
iii) Reps who have served the longest term.

We would like to separately agree that Step iii) is subject to the provision that no Rep elected prior to January 2013 will be required to stand down if they have served less than the term they were elected for.

In order to change the Constitution, we will need to hold a full member poll. Please vote by following this link: http://freegle.it/PollMay2013?verify=21e9

This poll opens on 22nd May 2013 and closes on 12th June 2013. This accommodates the required 14 days' notice of the poll and time to vote."

The poll itself explained: "Changes to the Constitution can only be made if supported by 66% of those Freegle Volunteers who vote in the poll.

If this poll is agreed, a copy of the altered Constitution, detailing changes, will be notified in writing to all Freegle Volunteers, via group owner addresses and on FreegleUK Central group, and archived in the Freegle Wiki."

The poll was conducted on Fluid Surveys software.

RESULT

The poll result was announced on 16th June 2013 on Central [1]. The results were:

"Change the constitution" as above:

Yes 103 - 95%
No 3 - 3%
Abstain 2 - 2%
Total votes: 108

This was carried by a majority above the 66% required, so the Constitution can be duly amended.

"No Rep to stand down" as above:

Yes 100 - 93%
No 5 - 5%
Abstain 1 - 1%
Total votes: 107
No answer: 1
Total accessing question: 108

This was carried by a majority.

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