Proposal to lower the consensus requirement for GA voting

[BenBurton]

Ben and Kelvin, why do you feel that giving so much power to a minority is important?

I hope Kelvin answered your question.

[m_x]

That's a false distinction, having such a high threshold is the only means we have right now that would make the majority want to address minority concerns. If instead we structured more consensus into the debate prior to the vote, the actual threshold in my opinion would be moot.

I think addressing peoples concerns (regardless of how small their voice is) is really important. Which is why I'm not looking for a simple majority, I think consensus building is important and it helps ensure that our actions will have broader appeal.

That said when all you need is five to ten votes to block it puts us in a dangerous position. IMO it makes it too easy for someone with ill intentions to prevent us from functioning.


ETA: Just look at the other night where you have people blocking who never spoke their piece and had no intentions of doing so. How do you build consensus with someone who is uninformed and doesn't share their opinion.

[BenBurton]

How do you build consensus with someone who is uninformed and doesn't share their opinion.

Engaging a large audience and getting them to believe in your cause. The original poster also has a great idea to chop the vote up for each of the different points. This will allow for clear discussions on each and specific differences to be resolved.

In the event that there still are some involved just to try and harm the organization then you will find reasonable minded people willing to vote in favor of a proposal they don't necessarily agree with because reasonable people would move to prevent harmful influences from hurt the movement as a whole.

[Todd]

If you make it too much of a pain in the ass to get something approved, people will simply stop getting things approved.
When you constantly put all the pressure on the presenters, there will be fewer and fewer presenters.
There have been several occasions where I have been asked to bring things to GA, that I did not on the grounds I didn't have the time or will to put that much effort into something,
It is absolutely unfair that for something to be passed the presenter must always be its champion, perfect example ? The no end of grief I get over the large format printer.
What is tech going to do with a large format printer ? NOTHING, it is useless to tech as a committee, the only reason it is in the tech proposal is, no one else is willing to be it's champion.
And at this point, I am feeling like just leaving it out of the tech proposal because it is such a hassle, if I do then what ? Then occupy looses yet another invaluable tool.
That is why 90% voting is one of our huge problems, not victories. It is very much one of the sources of why people are not showing up, they feel nothing gets done and that GA's are often just a waste of time. I know I do, and that's why I don't feel bad missing them often.
I think this has already shown itself to be true with the Cermack space, it sits idle most of the time, why ?
People don't want to be obligated to long term responsibilities / make it their job to be confront other people for things that often would be trivial.
The 90% absolutely is oppression by a minority, it allows very few people to torpedo votes simply on the grounds of not liking the presenter on a personal level. Nothing is more retarded or unavoidable. This has also already occurred on several occasions.
We need to plan for the more common scenarios not the more esoteric. It is unlikely that if something is actually bad, only 10% of people will be able to figure it out. To say that 75% of people on average are so dumb they can't see that something is a bad idea, is ridiculous. Like wise, if you can't get at least 25% of people to think an idea is bad, then how bad can it be ?
We need to be more realistic with our structure/process, not idealistic, if we wish to succeed.

[Todd]

Likewise, people who have concerns and see that an attempt is being made to address those concerns will naturally step aside once they see that every attempt has been made to address their concerns.

Sorry that just isn't true, I think it has been demonstrated a number of times already. Some people, are just assholes.

[BenBurton]

The large format printer is a great example. Show the that there is an actual business need and people will support it. Tack it onto a gigantic tech proposal and it gets lost in the shuffle.

If tech doesn't want it, who does? Have them present on it. Have them build the business case for it and present it.

My personal opinion is that a good dialog on specific topics will get them passed, even at 90%.

[abarr]

I whole-heartedly support this proposal.
I understand the need to address concerns of those who vote against proposals, as many times they have legitimate reasons for doing so. This is still possible with a 3/4 majority. That's still a large percentage.
What frustrates me about the current consensus requirement is that I've seen many uninformed individuals inhibit progress. It's as simple as one person bringing guests to the GAs, guests who have never been to an Occupy event and are uninformed about the content of the proposal, make a decision to vote based upon the person that brought them there. I've seen it happen.
Of course we welcome all supporters of Occupy to our GAs (new and old, informed and uninformed), and they are welcome to exercise their right to vote just like any of the rest of us. I do, however, find it incredibly unfair when a couple of uninformed people can render useless the hard work and research behind very strong proposals.

[Todd]

Just a note, the printer was actually voted against tonight. 4 of 23 people voted against it. I think that demonstrates quite well that a solid business plan, or pure logic, are in fact, not grounds for an idealistic voting system. That is 100% what this whole thread is about. That is the core issue. Entirely weather or not the the average person attending GA is willing to put forth enough effort and be informed enough. The tech proposal has actually been around in more or less its current form, but the printer specifically and all items for it exactly, have been the same, unchanged, for almost 1.5mo now, if that is not enough time to inform people about something as simple as a goddamn printer, then no amount of time is. So it is not a matter of people being informed. It is not a matter of logic, it is 100% opinion. So essentially, 90% voting is demanding that anything we do, we as a diverse movement with many different goals and aims, with people from many different backgrounds and organizations, should never do anything unless we can get 90% of them to agree 100% on very specific and narrow ideas.

Is it me or does that sound like we are trying to institutionalize "make everyone happy all the time, or do nothing" Which is pretty goddamn ridiculous, because THEN people bitch that we don't do anything. This double standard is thrown in tech's face constantly. And you wonder why tech is not only one of the most depended upon committees but also has the fewest active members of all committees. More people have left tech then any other committee, and then people wonder why occupychicago "isn't really doing anything".

[Todd]

Also, thank you for pointing our another thing abarr, yes, research. The tech proposal was 10 pages long, roughly 7 of those pages were devoted to JUST THE PRINTER. People sit around demanding all this research and shopping and whatever other shit they can pull out of their ass. NOT A SINGLE PERSON READ THE PROPOSAL.
NONE OF THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED AGAINST IT, READ IT. How is ANYTHING even remotely complicated ever supposed to pass under those conditions ?
The prevailing message to people doing the work here becomes "leaderless movement = instead of having 1-3 bosses, now every occupier is your boss" The amount of disrespect shown to the people doing all the grunt work is disgusting. What is supposed to keep people going in this movement ? They aren't being paid. Many people do it at great personal cost, not only in the impact it has on their livelihood but immense amounts of time invested on top of the irony that they are also the ones doing a lot of the donating.

Tech is a testament to this fact, it has steadily expanded over the months with zero dollars from GA, ZERO DOLLARS. Arts and rec have gotten more money from GA then tech up till now.
I know why, because apparently tech is magic, and free. It is this utopia we have been hiding from everyone. Where everything is free, and everyone is just having a grand ol time playing games and just general dickery. It's a blast, I don't know why there are only 3 active members. oh wait, I think I know what it is, its the whole "hiding utopia" thing. That must be what it is, not because it fucking sucks.

So this fiction that there is a worry about the responsibility of the people DOING THE WORK, and money just being thrown around willy nilly, referred to as "toys" in another thread. Which short note on how insulting that is. Toys ? really ? years of education, advanced electronics backgrounds, being paid to work in a highly technical field, working hours on end day after day AND A TEN GODAMN PAGE PROPOSAL, boiled down to "toys".
Like apparently people assume we are going to be putting the routers in our pants, or spending hours on end making shadow puppets with a projector, or printing out giant funny pictures to put in the bathroom on a specialty printer. THIS is what people think goes on ? are you fucking serious ?

And yet with all that bullshit, we are expected to get 90% approval. Which we didn't.
You set yourselves up to fail then wonder why, as if it is a surprise.

We need to have a teach-in about critical thinking, but I don't think anyone would attend.

[mattjohnson]

At 90%, we already have people who have tried to steamroll minority opposition and play the numbers game. That is not what consensus is about. Of course it's difficult to come to consensus, but it's democratic. Dropping the requirement down to 75% makes it so that people don't have to spend time building consensus anymore, they can more easily stack the vote in their favor.

I'm not sure I completely understand why we think the 90% is holding us back. There are plenty of things brought to GA that don't need to be there in the first place. Even if it does need to go before GA, the things that are controversial are not emergencies. NATO/G8 is still months away and we can work on the principles for a while. The movement isn't going to die if we don't have a printer.

The 90% system is set up so that when there is concern from a minority, Occupy Chicago has to address those concerns before moving forward. If we think there is some conspiracy of people coming out to throw a wrench into the process, there's a couple of solutions to that. For one, we could get more turnout at the GA which makes it harder to get 10% for a block. Another option would be to require no votes to say why they are voting no and/or what needs to be addressed to move them.

I'm against the spirit of this proposal.