Packing meetings

[Alex Meed]

I am an officer of a political organization that makes endorsements in elections by vote of the general membership. In a few weeks we'll have a special meeting to endorse candidates in the upcoming primary. Under our bylaws, a new member cannot vote on the day of becoming a member, unless the person was a member in the preceding semester.

Recently, I became concerned that a political consultant was planning to send a large number of new members to one of our regular meetings. The intent, I feared, was that they return to vote in our endorsement meeting and shift the outcome in favor of the candidates who employ the consultant.

I read this thread, and I want to be clear: we welcome new members. But other clubs in this city have dealt with this sort of "packing" by paid political consultants—in fact, our very club has faced packing attempts before, which is why we have the one-day waiting period. In the experience of other clubs, packers are not interested in long-term membership, only in voting for their candidate and landing them a coveted endorsement by the club.

Luckily, yesterday we considered and adopted a full constitutional revision reported by the bylaws committee. With the support of the executive board, we amended one of its provisos to provide a special, much longer waiting period for the upcoming endorsement meeting, specifically as a Band-Aid to keep it from being packed.

But there's agreement in our organization that we need to strengthen our anti-packing rules for future endorsement meetings. What methods have you run across to prevent meeting packing while not discouraging new members from joining the organization?

Edited November 21, 2019 at 07:52 AM by Alex M.

[jstackpo]

Clearly, your two goals, "counter-packing" vs recruitment, are totally incompatible. Good luck!

 

 

[Josh Martin]

19 hours ago, Alex M. said:

But there's agreement in our organization that we need to strengthen our anti-packing rules for future endorsement meetings. What methods have you run across to prevent meeting packing while not discouraging new members from joining the organization?

I have never worked with an organization that had this problem. It seems to me, however, that such methods will necessarily discourage new members from joining the organization - after all, that is literally what the rule is designed to do. So I think the question is not how to somehow prevent “packing” while not discouraging new members, but how to best balance the organization’s goals of preventing “packing” with its goal of recruitment. Several ideas occur to me:

• Some organizations require new members to be approved, often by the assembly, the board, or a membership committee. The approvers could attempt to ascertain whether the applicants are truly interested in long-term membership in the society. Additionally, this could provide flexibility. If there is an upcoming endorsement, perhaps the approvers could take their time with reviewing applications, drawing it out until the endorsement passes. In other situations, where there is less risk of “packing,” the approvers could review applications more quickly.
• If the principal concern is endorsements, the bylaws could provide that members may not vote on endorsements (and perhaps also bylaw amendments, to prevent a “packing” strategy to remove this rule) until they have been a member for a certain period of time, but may vote on other business.
• The bylaws could provide that members may only join during certain time periods (ideally, times which would be natural times for recruitment, but are not shortly before endorsement meetings).

Edited November 22, 2019 at 01:56 AM by Josh Martin