[Businessmtg] FW: Lynn's reference to part of my share

[Steve Rankin]

Hi Jerry,

I understand where you are coming from, however I disagree with your analysis.

First, the group decided that a super majority of the members attending the meeting was required to reach a group conscience.  How a group chooses to deal with Abstentions and not voting can have major consequences for the group.  I know of a group that recently accepted a Bylaws change proposed by the Board "Members are presumed to have voted for motions presented by the Board."  Since no more than 10% of the members actually vote, any motion presented by the Board is guaranteed to pass under this bylaw change, even if 100% of the members voting are against it.  
The reality is that 

Here at ASP, we intentionally chose a more conservative approach that requires a super majority of those present to pass a motion.  It doesn’t matter if the vote was close

Second, we do not know how those members that did not vote would have voted.  We only know that they did not vote.  They may have been undecided, or they may have been ambivalent, or they may have been unwilling to speak up.  It doesn't matter why.  What matters is that the motion failed to get the necessary votes to pass, therefore it failed.  

Third, the motion was worded the way the group chose to word it.  Our KBDM process invests a week into the wording of a motion.  In other words, after we reach a consensus on the various facets of an issue, the Secretary posts her understanding of the consensus and what factors need to be addressed in the motion for a proper motion.  At that point the members of the group have a week to massage and word smith the motion, gradually reaching a final consensus with specific wording chosen by the group.  THAT is the motion voted on.  

To quote the WSO website on the issue. . . "Everybody supports the final decision."

Love and SERENITY,
Steve




-----Original Message-----
From: Businessmtg On Behalf Of Jerry via Businessmtg
Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2024 8:47 PM
To: steve at serenitysys.com
Cc: ASP Business <businessmtg at asp-afg.org>
Subject: [Businessmtg] Lynn's reference to part of my share

All,

I agree with the last part of Lynn's comment: a pass or fail by one vote still is a pass or fail.

My point is that votes had nothing to do with the result. In fact votes cast on the motion:

 "ASP is to discontinue archiving personal recovery shares"

... were 14 in favor & only 3 votes against.

This previous motion did not fail by one vote, it failed because 5 members did not vote. Notice that had the motion been written so:

"ASP is to CONTINUE archiving personal recovery shares"

... it's likely the votes would then have been: 3 in favor & 14 against. !!! This motion would have failed, too !!!

>>> We are in a pickle where a very clear consensus may not necessarily yield a voting result which matches that consensus because of those not voting!

When 5 non-participants can prevent the will of 14 participating voters we have a business problem.

My answer to Lynne's P.S. question posed to me:

     The voting members DID agree to discontinue archiving and by a wide margin. But non-voters tipped the scale the other way through their inaction. I don't dispute the results, it's how we do things, but neither do I accept a statement which says we agreed to keep archiving. That's not what happened.

     Another bite at this apple may result in everyone voting and bringing a result matching the expressed consensus of this BM's participants. I hope so.

In service,
Jerry
-


On October 26, 2024, at 10:48 AM, Lynne <lynne at asp-afg.org> wrote:

Hi everyone,

There seem to be several interconnected issues about the archives.

Anonymity in an email meeting is complicated. And is interrelated with privacy. On one hand, an email meeting is the most anonymous as we never see each others faces. We don’t see what cars each other drive and we never will see each other in the grocery store. Someone could choose to set up a new email address specifically for ASP with a false name and no one would be able to connect that to the real person. On the other extreme are people who choose to send emails to ASP with their real names in the display on the email address. Then there are the in betweens like me - I don’t have my real name displayed on my email address, but if anyone searched my email address in google, I’m sure my real name would come up. We are all comfortable to different degrees with our privacy being breached on a daily basis by shares being sent to hundreds of people each day with varying degrees of personal information - any of whom could save our shares and use them in whatever way they wanted.

Then there is the issue of disclosure. Would being clear in our welcome letter and being clear(er) on the members page that we have an archive then make having an archive ok?

I’ve also thought about what information my husband could find out if he joined ASP. It’s only been recently that I told him that I go to Al anon. I had kept it a secret before and would use ASP on my phone and computer. But when I thought about that, the archives really didn’t play a part. If he wanted to join, he would then be getting my shares on a daily basis. Wouldn’t really matter if he could read them in the archive or not. He’d still be getting them emailed to him from the moment he joined. For me, I had a choice of whether to switch to a new email address to protect my identity or keep using the one I was. I made the choice not to. I figure each member of ASP is able to make the same calculation and choice. And that is irrespective of whether we have archives or not.

Personally, I am not bothered by ASP having an archive that is limited to members who know their password. I say that because I doubt a lot of members know their password that is emailed to them when they sign up. I trust our members not to use them maliciously as I have to trust our members not to use my shares maliciously every single day that I share and that share is emailed to hundreds of people I don’t know who could do anything with that email. 

I also can see why having the archives could go against the principle of anonymity. I just think it is a very complicated issue. And the fact that members do use the archives gives me pause about deleting it. A lot of the issues that have been brought up about the archive won’t go away if we delete the archive. It is only one small slice of how our anonymity could be compromised by sharing at ASP. 

Hugs,
Lynne

P.s. to Jerry about the group conscience. We don’t have a group conscience about many things that have been done at ASP for years because of the history of the meeting and its transition from private ownership to being run by the members. But we DO have a failed group conscience to eliminate them, which means the group at the time did not agree to eliminate them. I don’t think it should matter if it was by a slim margin. Should I look at our group consciences that passed by a single vote and think less of them? Not enforce them as much as the ones that had a clear win?


Sent from my iPhone
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