GAC Committee Report to Council 17/12/05 - Electronic Voting Procedures

A report from the InternetNZ Governance and Constitutional Committee, December 2005

During its November/December meeting, the Governance and Constitutional Committee was asked to consider whether the current procedures surrounding Council e-voting were proper and satisfactory. The issue arose because of recent e-votes that were presented to Council as urgent, or which apparently required approval of matters or expenditure that had not previously been considered or approved by Council.

After examining the nature of the process and the votes in question, the committee has determined the following:

• The processes surrounding e-voting appear to be sound, and no recent vote has breached or compromised those processes in any way. The Committee reminds Council that as a body we will need to be reactive from time to time, and that urgent e-votes are therefore sometimes going to be unavoidable.
• Most of the current issues arising from the e-voting process are actually perceptual problems to do with the way in which the e-votes have been presented: in particular, the inclusion of covering material and emotive language in the e-vote itself have at times created a perception that proper forms are somehow being circumvented. While some councillors have complained that insufficient time has been allowed for discussion, the simple fact is that they have the full 48 hour period of the e-vote to conduct discussion, and councillors are free to place their vote at any time after the vote has been called. If an e-vote is carried or defeated before the 48 hour period has concluded, it is only because a sufficient number of councillors have decided that they need no further consideration prior to casting their votes. This is a good example of democracy in action.

The Committee did, however, decide that certain steps could reasonably be taken to streamline and strengthen the e-voting process, in particular:

• E-votes will now be called by the Secretary on a mailing list created specifically and solely for the purpose of voting. While all Councillors will be members of this list, only the Secretary and President will be able to post to it, and messages to it will be formatted so that replies will automatically be sent to the proper address for vote counting. Messages will also contain a hyperlink that councillors can use to initiate discussion of the e-vote on the council-discuss mailing list if they wish.
• Calls for e-votes will contain strictly the following information: the motion, the names of the proposer and seconder, the opening and closing times for the e-vote, and the link for starting discussion. No other covering material will be permitted in a call for an e-vote. The Secretary will develop a standard template for this format.
• Only e-votes that specifically and unambiguously indicate the voter’s choice and which are sent to the proper address will be considered valid. Votes sent to the discussion lists or which do not unambiguously declare a voting intention will be disallowed.
• The Secretary will report the result of the e-vote to both the voting list and the council-discuss list as soon as it is decided, clearly showing the names of councillors whose votes have been counted, and the vote they cast.

We believe that these steps will properly separate the process of voting from the consideration of the material being voted upon.