[NABS-L] Procedures Re: board position 4

[Arielle Silverman]

Hi all,
As a former NABS president who was involved with some messy NABS
elections once upon a time, and as someone with no skin in the game at
this point, I wanted to offer a few clarifications regarding the
constitution and how I have seen these kinds of matters addressed in
the past.
It is true that the constitution specifies a process for election of
board members by a majority of voting members at a regular business
meeting. However, as the supreme authority of the organization, the
active members present at a business meeting may vote to make one-time
procedural amendments. They may also vote to give certain powers to
the chair of the meeting, in this case the NABS president, depending
on circumstances. There have been rare cases when a chair must decide
the outcome of an election; for example, I had to determine the winner
of one NABS vice-presidential election when there was an exact tie in
the vote.
I was not at Wednesday's business meeting, but as I believe Kathryn is
a person of integrity, I trust that the members at that meeting did
vote to delegate authority to their chair to appoint the board member.
Kathryn is also correct that the business meeting is the ultimate
platform where members can vote on procedures.
While this is perhaps not how I would have handled the situation, it
sounds like the NABS members at a business meeting agreed unanimously
to the procedural change, and this it is legitimate in my opinion.
While dialogue on the NABS list cannot override the will of an
assembled business meeting, these discussions are helpful to learn
from in the future. Hopefully we will not have to deal with the
challenges of a virtual convention in the future. I would, however,
advise to have any modified election procedures adopted by the board
and then presented to and voted upon by the membership prior to
beginning the elections. I can think of at least one way to handle an
election with more than two candidates using a Google form, if we were
to make a one-time change to the rules such that the person with the
highest vote count is elected even if they do not receive 50% of the
vote. This would eliminate the need for follow-up contests. Perhaps
folks already considered my idea, and found an issue with it that I
missed.
Please take my comments in the spirit of education with which they are
intended, and not as a judgment or critique of NABS. The parts of the
NABS programming that I did attend were very well-organized, in my
opinion, and I heard rave reviews from several students afterward.

Best,
Arielle Silverman:
NABS president, 2009-2011;
NABS board member and officer, 2005-2009