Proposed changes to the Loomio voting process for e-NABLE proposals

e-NABLE’s Loomio voting process has served the community effectively for about six years now. It has resulted in quite a few funded projects and governance decisions that have helped to move the community forward in various ways.  See https://www.loomio.com/e-nablio for a full history of our past proposals.

Although the overall process has worked, in recent months, the Community Coordination Council has identified some specific aspects of the process that can be improved. This thread is intended open a discussion and air some possible improvements.

• Discussion prior to voting

  • On September 20, 2020, the community voted to approve a new policy stating that new proposals would require a discussion period of 1 week before voting starts, and then voting would need to run for at least 7 days. See the full details here.

  • Although the policy was approved, it has not always been observed. Some proposals initiated a vote without a prior discussion. To address this issue, we propose to adjust Loomio permissions so that anyone can create a new discussion thread, but only admins are allowed to start the voting process for a new proposal.

• Extensions of voting deadlines

  • At present, a failing proposal can be extended repeatedly in order to achieve the desired outcome. It is also possible for  proposals to be modified without allowing adequate time for consideration.  We therefore propose 

  • (1) each proposal should have a voting period of 10 calendar days, with no extensions (unless admins determine that it's appropriate)

  • (2) there should be no changes to proposals within 48 hours of the closing deadline. That way, If changes are made that people have time to vote, or change their votes if they choose.

• Voting on your own proposals

  • We propose to make it explicit that the lead proposal author/submitter should not vote on their own proposals

• Requirements to participate in voting

  • The Loomio voting process is designed to ensure that active participants in the e-NABLE community have a say in policy and funding decisions. It should not be possible to recruit non-active friends and/or family members to help get a proposal passed. Therefore, we propose that eligible voters must have:

    • (1)  Joined the e-NABLE Hub, and 

    • (2) Introduced self in the e-NABLE Hub 

  • Each of the above activities results in a digital badge being awarded. Going forward, admins will check to see that these two badges have been obtained at least 10 days before the new membership requests to Loomio are approved.   

• Calculations for a passing vote

  • The current rules for determining whether a vote passes are as follows:

    • Each project proposal must receive at least 15 Agree votes with at least 80% of the total votes in support of the project in order to be approved. For determining the approval percentage, “Abstain” votes are not counted in the total.

  • This means that “Abstain” votes do not impact the result at all, even though it often indicates genuine ambivalence on the part of the voter (e.g., as compared to those who simply do not vote).

  • To address this issue, we propose that the voting calculations be revised as follows:

    • To be approved, each project proposal must receive at least 20 total votes, with at least 80% of the total votes in support of the project. 10% or more Disagree votes would require discussion in a Town Hall meeting.

  • Block votes:

    • In addition to “Agree,” “Abstain,” and “Disagree,” Loomio also provides a “Block” option when voting

    • If anyone votes to block, this puts voting on hold until the next Town Hall Meeting (currently held each Friday)

    • The blocking voter is expected to attend the next weekly Town Hall meeting to discuss the reasons for the block vote. At the end of this discussion, the attendees of the Town Hall will vote to decide whether to lift the block and allow voting to proceed or to cancel the vote in its current form.

    • If the blocking voter does not show up to the Town Hall meeting, that person’s block vote can be sustained or canceled by a vote of those in attendance.