Establishment of a member-led process for organising All-Member Votes - Votul membrilor DiEM25

As part of the CC Vision Implementation, we wish to completely rewrite the OP section on All-Member Votes in order to clarify how members can introduce All-Member Votes.

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DiEM25 strives to promote participatory democracy in the formulation of its policies and practices. Policies at all levels (local, regional, national and pan-European) are approved in all-member votes. Even when a policy concerns a local or national issue, all members (across Europe) must approve it by means of an all-member vote. This transnational approach is inherent in DiEM25’s radical transnationalism.

Prerequisites for AMVs:

All-Member votes (AMVs) must concern issues of policy. Non-policy, administrative decisions (e.g. about events, tools, communication and so on) are made by the people elected or appointed to the international and national collectives, and on a smaller scale by the activist groups in each location. Amendments to the Organising Principles and to the manifesto must follow the more rigorous path outlined in section 8 of our Organising Principles.

Policies that belong to one of the pillars of the Progressive Agenda shall normally be developed and voted in line with the Progressive Agenda section of these Organising Principles, except if they are particularly urgent (e.g. because there will be a national referendum on it and DiEM25 should campaign for one of the sides in the referendum). Topics of national referenda are very likely candidates for All-Member Votes. AMVs are also commonly held about the program our MPs represent in parliament, DiEM25’s alliances and participation in elections, and our stance on big current events / foreign policy issues, such as Brexit. All AMVs, including all proposed vote options, must be in line with DiEM25’s Manifesto, the values and principles reflected therein, and not contradict any other decision taken by the movement.

Proposing an AMV

AMV proposals can emerge either directly from the Coordinating Collective (CC) or from NCs, DSCs or individual members.

Proposals for electoral activities, due to being sensitive and time-dependent in nature, shall always be submitted directly to the CC. All other proposals can be submitted via the below process:

1. Have a discussion about the issue, preferably in the DiEM25 forum and with the “clarify-for-vote” tag. Discussions may also take place at DiEM25 events and similar.

2. Based on the discussion, one of the people will draw up a potential vote text with vote options and a list of pros and cons for each option (just bullet points). These texts will have a word limit of 2000 characters for the text, 300 characters for the pros and cons (respectively) and 20 characters for the title. Exemptions might be made for extraordinary cases.

3. The above are submitted through the AMV Submission Form. The deadline by which a vote result is necessary must be at least 30 days in the future, in order to allow enough time for planning, editing, translating, promoting and actual voting.

4. The CC will evaluate whether it is in DiEM25’s interest to have a vote on this issue. If the answer is No, or if the suggested timeframe is unsuitable (but not if the vote is rejected for not meeting the prerequisites), the member who submitted this proposal can appeal the decision by starting a forum thread with the tag “please-support-vote”. Any denial of a vote by the CC will always be accompanied by an explanation of the reasoning behind the refusal. The first post must include the proposal and the CC’s full response and a request to upvote. If this post has upvotes equal to 20% of the past 30 days’ active forum members  of DiEM25 and there is still time to have a vote (i.e. at least 14 days before the deadline given in the proposal), it will become an All-Member Vote even against the CC’s initial refusal. In cases where the CC claims great harm could come to DiEM25 from such a vote, the VC will decide whether the vote should go through. The forum moderation team will archive all please-support-vote threads whose deadline has expired, as well as those which have been open for two months without collecting the necessary support, and those whose promoters engaged in disruptive spamming.

5. Before sending the vote text off to translation, the CC will actively look for people who are affected by this vote in different ways, and either merge their views into the given text/options or create additional options that seem likely to represent the views of a lot of DiEM25 members.

Running an AMV

In the case that the initial discussion happened outside the forum, a forum thread for discussion of the topic should be created as soon as the AMV has been approved. This way, the time needed for editing and translation can be used by DiEMers in order to form an opinion.

AMVs can take three shapes:

Type 1: Yes/No

Type 2: Single choice from 2-6 options, with a tiebreaker vote between the top two options if none of the options get more than 50%.

Type 3: Multiple choices from a longer list

Only members who have joined before the vote start and have verified their identity may vote, and they may vote only once. Anyone trying to manipulate the system or voting more than once will be immediately banned.

AMVs typically run for seven days. This period may be shortened by two days if the issue is very urgent. It may also be shortened by two days if forming an opinion on the topic will not take much time (e.g. an issue that has been covered extensively on international news). Issues that are low in scope may be submitted to a quick Validating Council vote instead.

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