I don’t agree with 1 year term limits, and I’m a little miffed that the petition is rather like a bill that goes to congress - if you vote for it you get everything in it. How about line-item veto power.
Seriously, I really believe one year is too short. Two years seems more appropriate for continuity, etc. Two years with the seats being staggered. I really don’t want my board member to immediately have to start running for re-election after being elected.
What are the merits of one year vs. two years?
This is the only item I have a problem with in the petition.
I agree with you but Dan & Lew decided it was all or nothing. Of course they had the opportunity to put them on the ballot individually but chose to make it all or nothing.
By making it all or nothing they can put thru issues that we might not completely agree with by telling us it is better than what we have now or if the petition does not pass. Or they will tell you to vote for the petition and change it in the next election. This is after they have closed the petition “loophole” they used in to get their petition on the ballot. It was good enough for them but we cannot be trusted to use it responsibly
But I believe it is in the best interest to vote for the petition only because if we do not we may lose any chance for changes in the future.
However, I believe if this petition does not pass, because of members who are not aware of the ramifications, you will have Dan and Lew to thank for its failure. There are a lot of members out there who have no idea of Slowtwitch.com who like you will read it and decide, due to one issue, not to vote for the petition.
I agree as well. I think one year terms are too short, and that the 6 year term limit is restrictive. However, I agree with most of the petition, and will therefore vote for it.
I think that the petition is designed to create a whole bunch of fail-safes so that the current situation cannot arise again.
It’s interesting to note that this petition limits the power and tenure of the very people bringing it to the table, who are also the people largely responsible for getting us to the point of a recall(if that’s what we can call this) election.
So if you vote against the petition and for the current board, they may stay in power for all eternity. However, if you vote for the petition and vote in the board that brought the petition, they have six years to fix the problems and step aside.
I suppose you could also vote against the petition and for the Board Candidates that support the petition and still keep the By-Laws the way they are. Then we could still make the changes to the By-Laws one issue at a time or at least put them on the ballot individually.
“Seriously, I really believe one year is too short.”
i do not want to appear impolitic and ungenerous, but it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me how it is i absolutely do not have the gene necessary to teach anything to those in certain age groups. it does, however, provide me an interesting subject lesson, and i’m hoping there is something i can learn about cognition. perhaps instead of answering questions, i can ask one or two and this might provide for an intuitive response that opens up a door that i haven’t been able to budge up to this point.
let us say that the petition passes. let us further say that you and others feel strongly that board members ought not to serve only one year, but ought to serve two. what can you do about this?
let us say the petition fails. let us further say that you’d like to change the bylaws that have to do (say) with how elections are carried out. what can you do about this?
You are absolutely correct. I was just outlining the established polarities in the current election, which seems to be as I stated above(the current board is against the petition and wants to be re-elected, etc.)
Your suggestion is a valid alternative.
(I would normally insert a humorous quip here, but everyone is so serious lately that I’ll ask that you imagine that I made an election-related witticism.)
I plan to vote yes for the petition. I should have clarified my post. I also understand why you have this as an all or nothing vote.
I understand the purpose of all the items and agree with them (including the 6 year limit), except for the term limit item. I don’t agree with it and perhaps I don’t understand the purpose of it. Which is why I posted on this specific item.
Why is one year better than two? Could someone counter the “cons” pointed out in the USAT letter on my dinning room table?
This was the most difficult issue for Dan and me when we drafted the language of the petition.
Arguments for one-year terms:
(1). Increased accountability. The current board was not being very responsive to membership concerns. Arguably, that might change for the better if they had to earn our trust more often.
(2). The eight-district system seemed fundamental to salutory change in USAT governance. But if we went to two-year terms, half of the country would not have anything to vote on eah year. Since engaging the electorate seemed another priority, we eventually opted for the one-year term.
Arguments against one-year terms.
(1). The problem with the learning curve,
(2) and the chance that people would be so wrapped up in RUNNING for office that they would never give their full attention to the job they were running FOR.
Personally, I lean towards the one-year term, if only because the US House of Reps does fine even though its members are ALWAYS running for the next election. But I would have no serious objections if it was two years. Let’s pass the petition, and then put the question on the ballot for the next election (in February of 2005). If 60% of the people voting agree with you, the terms would be changed immediately, which means we would never actually have a one-year term.
Personally, I lean towards the one-year term, if only because the US House of Reps does fine even though its members are ALWAYS running for the next election.
Well, not quite the same. US Reps are not elected to one year terms.
“Why is one year better than two? Could someone counter the “cons” pointed out in the USAT letter on my dinning room table?”
first, the question is tempered by the fact that terms, term limits, the name of the organization, and its prospective inclusion of badmitton and shuffleboard as fully vested components of multisport, can be added by a 60% majority of the members on a ballot circulated each year, and only 100 signatures of annual members gets badmitton or terms of office on that ballot. that is the central feature of the petition. absent a YES vote on the petition, the first three things a new board does is:
vote to make 2yr terms 6yr terms.
vote away your right to petition
order the federation (i.e., you) to pay their $160k+ in legal fees they’ve run up ($100k for their attorney + $60k for the USAT attorney that basically acted as co-counsel for their attorney).
that said, specifically to your point:
these people are supposed to be answerable to you. please produce for me the emails, or website, or snail mail, or note via carrier pigeon, showing you what your representative has done for you in the past 12 months. absent that, i must assume you have no idea. don’t you think you should have an idea? perhaps if we actually make them RUN FOR OFFICE every year it’d act as a substitute way for them to be accountable to you at least once per year.
maybe i’m a bad candidate. maybe girand/gattis will be retained in office. you want to give them 2 yrs before you can take another crack at them? has ANYONE on this board earned the right to serve for 2 more years? if any board ever deserved to have its members put it on probation, isn’t this board the poster child for that?
if we have 1yr terms, we also have 8 districts instead of 3 districts (both are on the petition as inseparable items, for very good reason). let’s take the west excepting california as an example. jose valdez runs unopposed. likewise jack weiss runs unopposed. the mid-atlantic has maybe 1, maybe 2 candidates, instead of 5 running (as is now the case). in other words, it’s easier to campaign annually for the presidency of lichtenstein than for western europe. therefore, the idea of continually campaigning is hogwash. you’ll remind the members of your much SMALLER region what you did over the past 12 months, and what you’ll do for the next 12 months, which you ought to be doing anyway. they’ll elect you if you’re effective, they won’t if you’re not.
in a year or two, if in retrospect you think my arguments above haven’t panned out as i’ve suggested, i’ll help you get your 100 needed signatures, put it on the ballot, and get it changed back to 2yr.
or vote no on the petition and the new board will decide that petitions are just a bad idea, vote them out, in such case willy will blame me instead of blaming himself for their demise (he could come out strongly in favor of the petition, as he knows would be best for all concerned, but he’d rather sulk instead).
“in such case willy will blame me instead of blaming himself for their demise (he could come out strongly in favor of the petition, as he knows would be best for all concerned, but he’d rather sulk instead).”
Dan,
I never said I was againt the petition. If you look above you will see where I said it was in the best interest to vote for the Petition. I was, and always have been, concerned that the petition will not pass due to it being all inclusive rather than broken into individual petitions.
Voters who are not up to speed on the issues may not like ONE issue and vote the petition down because you and Lew made it “take it or leave it”. I think you are taking a risk that didn’t need to be taken by consolidating it into one petition when you did not have to.
I agree with your implied answers. I think your proposal is lacking in a few areas, but without it we will potentially be without the ability to make changes.
I support two year terms, and I want to see a better definition about how to change the by laws what constitutes a positive vote by members (simple majority or 2/3 majority and what about a minimum percentage of members voting?).
without the proposed changes, we may not get to see any of this happen.
"(I would normally insert a humorous quip here, but everyone is so serious lately that I’ll ask that you imagine that I made an election-related witticism.) "
“did you consider making ten positions to reflect the current regions? Why only 8?”
if we’d have made more than 8 regions we’d have had to split california, because as it is it’s already bigger than one-eighth of the country. that creates huge havoc with trying to figure out who’s in what region. by zip code?
USOC regs would cause us to have to add another elite board seat, taking us to 14 overall directors. USAT has already had a history of a lot of directors, and it’s disastrous. whether it’s USAT, USOC, or IOC, all have gone the route of lots of directors and all have repented of it.
all that said, the petition has a self-remedy for lopsided regions. as i recall, when the largest region has double the members of the smallest, this triggers a redistricting to rebalance the regions. as it now is, the largest of the 8 regions is within about 25% of the smallest. btw, you can thank lew kidder for figuring all this out.
