[Businessmtg] FW: Note on Our Founding Documents re: Substantial Unanimity

[Steve Rankin]

Hi Jerry,

Thanks, but I have to disagree with your assessment of how we "ought" to
tally our votes.

ASP, like most of the Al-Anon fellowship makes a serious effort to resist
both haste when considering changes to our meetings, and many groups also
resist tallying votes in a manner that hastens change, or facilitates
hastening change.  A neutral reading of the Founding Policies would agree
that they are intended to require a super majority of the membership to
effect a substantial change.  Additionally, many years ago, ASP adopted a
KBDM process that is designed to ensure that our decision-making process is
based on an informed consensus that [hopefully] takes sufficient time that
emotions have time to give way to thoughtful deliberation.

While it is true that clause 6.b. requiring a 2/3s majority uses the word
"members" we need to note that both clauses 6.a. and 6.c. refer to the
tallying the votes of the "voting membership".

This issue has been debated before and the membership agreed that 6.b.
requires a 2/3s affirmative vote of the membership of the Business Meeting
present to vote on the issue.

Our goal has long been to require that motions require a super majority of
the members present vote FOR a motion for it to be a true Al-Anon group
conscience.

The overarching goal of the Al-Anon decision-making process is to reach what
we call "substantial unanimity."

One of the reasons is that we do NOT see abstentions as neutral.  Instead,
we see an abstention as NOT FOR the motion.  Likewise, we do not see "Not
Voting" as neutral.  Instead, we see a member not voting as NOT FOR a
motion.

I've found that it often helps to consider extreme situations to understand
how an interpretation of a policy can play out.  Please consider this
example:

→ The Business Meeting is considering a controversial issue.  Some members
feel very strongly that Motion X should pass, while a few members feel
equally strongly that Motion X should fail.  However, the issue is so
controversial, and/or so challenging that only a handful of members actually
vote; 25 members attend the Business Meeting:
    For:                    5
   Against:              2
   Abstain:              2
   Did Not Vote:   16
If we follow Jerry's thinking in this example, the motion would pass because
clearly over 2/3s of the Yays and Nays voted for the motion.  But, does that
truly reflect the group conscience of the membership present?  No.
It is painfully obvious that the Motion X did not receive anything remotely
like "substantial unanimity" of the group; only of the 5 that voted for
Motion X.

This is the essence of why we require affirmative substantial unanimity of
all members present when we vote on an issue in ASP.

Love and SERENITY,
Steve






Jerry said: ". . . the Founding Policies state that in order to make
substantive changes to the meeting it specifies that 2/3rds of the VOTING
members approve. . ."

The Founding Policies state:





-----Original Message-----
From: Businessmtg On Behalf Of Jerry via Businessmtg
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2024 1:32 PM
To: steve at serenitysys.com
Cc: ASP Business <businessmtg at asp-afg.org>
Subject: [Businessmtg] Note on Our Founding Documents re: Substantial
Unanimity

Biz-Pals,

I believe our decision on archiving members' topic shares is a major change
requiring three Business Meeting discussions before a motion could be
formed.

Further it's high time we consider how our Founding Policies [FP's] apply to
voting and importantly how to count the votes.

Worth noting, the Business Meeting can not change ASP's Founding Policies
[see FP#1.] Changes to Founding Policies can only happen if there is an
approval by 3/4s of the ENTIRE ASP MEMBERSHIP. (not yelling)

Motion #4, which seems to imply that a 2/3rds vote in the BM could change
our Founding Policy, is superseded by our Founding Policies, and is
therefore improper in this respect. The BM is not permitted to change
Founding Policy per FP#1.

Note that the Founding Policies state that in order to make substantive
changes to the meeting it specifies that 2/3rds of the VOTING members
approve (again, not yelling,) are required, not 2/3rds of all the attending
members [FP#6c.] This is in stark contrast to how ASP counts its votes,
where the voting members and the not voting members are combined when
calculating whether the 2/3's or 50% thresholds are met. We ought to be
counting only the yeas & nays, not the "did not vote's" if we're to stick to
our Policies.

The original motion to stop archiving members' topic shares, according to
how ASP's Founding Policies specify how to determine results of Group
Conscience voting, passed. It did not fail - except that it did not get
discussed over three Business Meetings before the vote.

One could reasonably determine that we've had two Business Meetings
discussing archiving shares, and one more BM would satisfy Policy where upon
a vote could be held and votes counted as required by Policy and we could
move on.

In service,
Jerry
-
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