Guidelines for Online Voting of the International Council

Article 6.13 of IAMCR statutes give the possibility to its President to conduct extraordinary meetings of the International Council (IC) by post or electronically:

S6.13. The International Council will meet ordinarily every year. An extraordinary meeting may, if necessary and with at least 60 days’ notice, be either called by the President or requisitioned by at least one third of the members, and may be conducted either by post or electronically.

By extension, it has be noticed in several cases that IAMCR President has “informally” consulted online the IC on some topics in between its actual compulsory meetings or in order to better prepare them.

As a consequence, the Legal Committee, at the request of IAMCR President and its Executive Board (EB), has established the following guidelines when online voting of the IC is needed. The Legal Committee suggests that these guidelines should be informally enforced for a two-year duration, to be confirmed or amended by the General Assembly in 2016 and then included in IAMCR by-laws with any necessary amendments.

The guidelines are the following:

I – Ordinary Online Voting of the International Council

1. The IAMCR President, by his/her initiative or according to IAMCR statutes and by-laws voting rules, may consult the IC electronically on topics which would require a vote in order to be taken into action in between its compulsory meetings.
2. The topic(s) needing a vote should be circulated among IC members with the precise issues in question and giving the possibility for members to vote for clearly laid out options.
3. 15 full days (15x24 hours) should be allowed for IC members to discuss online the proposed topic(s) using the IC listserv.
4. 7 full days (7x24 hours) should then be allowed for IC members to send their votes simultaneously to the General Secretary and to an IC member (who is not part of the EB) designated by a vote of the IC for the duration of his/her mandate. Electronic voting through an approved online system is also possible.
5. A vote will be positive if a simple majority of the IC members vote positively.
6. The complete results should be sent no later than 7 full days (7x24 hours) after the end of the previous period by the President to all IC Members, including the names of the voters and their individual votes, unless the vote is about a person or a specific group of individuals, or unless five IC members request, during the 15 day initial period mentioned in Article 3, not to include names.

II –Online Extraordinary Meeting of the International Council

1. In application of article 6.13 of IAMCR statutes, the President, by him/herself or as requested by at least one third of the IC members, may conduct an online extraordinary IC meeting.
2. The agenda item(s) needing a vote should be circulated among the IC members with precise questions and giving the possibility for members to vote on clearly laid out answers.
3. 45 full days (30x24 hours) should be allowed for IC members to discuss online the agenda items using the IC listserv, with a specific subject “Online extraordinary meeting of the IC – ongoing discussion”.
4. After the period indicated in Article 7 above, 15 full days (15x24 hours) should be allowed for IC members to send their votes simultaneously to the General Secretary and to an IC member (who is not part of the EB) designated by vote of the IC for the duration of his/her mandate.
5. A vote will be positive if a simple majority of the IC members vote positively.
6. The complete results should be sent no later than 7 full days (7x24 hours) after the end of the previous period by the President to all IC Members, including the names of the voters and their individual votes, unless the vote is about a person or a specific group of individuals, or unless five IC members request, during the 45 days initial period mentioned in Article 9, not to include names.