Judge foundry’s Elections Committee is tasked with the fair, transparent, and effective administration of all elections and referenda in which the organization’s members vote.
For the purposes of fairness, this committee will be largely administered without significant oversight by the board of the methods of conducting elections.
Judge Foundry’s board will appoint the committee chair. The chair may be removed by public vote at a board meeting—the board may not vote in executive session or take action without a meeting to remove the committee chair. The committee chair may also resign at any time by emailing notice to the board. In the event of a vacancy, the board will appoint a new committee chair.
Judge Foundry’s parliamentarian will be the committee vice chair and a member of the committee.
The chair and vice chair, acting jointly, will have authority to appoint and remove other members of the committee.
Prior to beginning the planning for any given election year, they will ask each member whether they wish to remain part of the committee. Members of the committee are prohibited from running for Board of Directors in the year they join the project or affirm that they wish to remain a member. If a member joining the committee or affirming their membership wishes to run for any other office under Judge Foundry, they must recuse themselves from any committee discussions specific to that office, and shall not receive any private information related to that office, for the year in which they intend to run.
Members of the committee must be members of Judge Foundry in good standing.
The elections committee will be responsible for:
- Propose bylaw amendments, special rules of order, and standing rules relating to elections
- Selecting the software to be used in the administration of elections
- Proposing to the members the specific method of proportionate ranked choice voting to be used in electing directors
- Proposing to the members the voting method to be used in electing any other elected officials, such as regional advisors
- Proposing to the members the voting method to be used in voting on any other vote put before the organization’s members
- Spending funds as allocated by the board for the purposes of elections
- Administering elections at the annual meeting
- Providing data for the audit of elections by members, including an anonymous list of votes, and a list of voters
- Proposing to the members a timeline and process for nominations
- Proposing to the members the process of nominating members, rules for nominating statements and Q&A
- Moderating election communication, including structured communication from the candidates to the members, which will be conducted on judgefoundry.org and magicjudges.org, in coordination with other projects in charge of distributed communication as needed
- Proposing to the members the process for filling of vacant positions mid-term
The elections project may not:
- Moderate or control communications by or behavior of candidates on platforms other than magicjudges.org, judgefoundry.com, and platforms created by the Elections Project
- Change the method of elections for directors from proportional ranked choice voting to any other method
- Permit the vote of non-members in elections
- Conduct elections in a manner that would violate Judge Foundry’s bylaws, Minnesota law or Federal law governing Judge Foundry.