@kirktwist @davidpeterson @terryjones You are the current president, vice-president and secretary, right? So can you inform us where we are at with the preparations, please?

In two weeks not even a comment from anybody, be it board member or not? Is this party still alive?

Has anyone read Article 7 of the constitution? We only need 15% of the party membership to agree to change the constitution. Now as we only have 14 financial members, we only need 3 of them to agree to a change.

As the elections in September are not going to be relevant for us we could consider changing the constitution before then rather than waiting until afterwards.

OK, we all agree that we need to elect a new board. How can we organise that? I guess that would actually be something that the board would have to work out and perform; but I fear we cannot count on that as no board member has commented on my request from 19 days ago.
There is no indication that we can ever hope for any move of the current board. I fear we have to regard the current board as non-existing.

If I am not mistaken (@kirktwist @davidpeterson @terryjones @benvidulich @andrewmcpherson @brucekingsbury to comment on this), we ought to organise this on the membership level.

@ben I understand you have not been provided with the information necessary to work out for certain who actually currently has the status of a financial member; but can you work out how many may or may not be?

We somehow must be able to work out who actually is eligible for voting!

The above comment is directed at @benvidulich, sorry.

Not non-existing entirely :-) I did vote on this Loomio proposal after all. And I am reading stuff mostly when I get to it. Just am very very busy right now, and behind on a million and one things.

Yes, @davidpeterson, I have noticed. This is your participation on the member level in your role as a member of the party. That is fine.

It's just that in your role as a member of the board - or more precisely: as the vice-president of the party - you, like most other board members, produced very little output.
I am sure that most, if not all of you board members have taken on your duty in good faith to make things going; But reading through the IRC log of the board meetings of the last year, it is pretty obvious that the communication in the board was either very fruitless or frustrating or was just not happening at all.
Whoever tried to develop an initiative (as seldom as that happened), it didn't get much appreciation or support and finally got simply stuck.
Things that are absolutely critical for the existence of the party have not been addressed at all, regardless how often they have been brought to the attention of the board.

I only hope that we can establish a team spirit outside of the board to get things resolved and to get the necessary support of the board members where their involvement is inevitable.

First and foremost must the member officer put into the position to be able to recognise the membership status of each and every of us! He is missing information that must be made accessible to him.

Can we count on your support?

I've been asking about membership statuses since ages ago... :-/ I only have a somewhat hazy view on this unfortunately. And would love just as much as you to know more!

Surprisingly this current board was more functional (or less dysfunctional?) than most PPNZ boards recently! :-) Though we seemed to run out of steam midway through the term...

I have had no information about the previous PPNZ account, so I have had no way to tell who has been a member unless they paid since I have had the new account.
As it took 3 months to even get hold of the previous treasurer just to transfer the account balance, I really do not know what more I can do about the situation, suffice to say that unless the board elections happen before July 14 (while I am on holiday in auckland and hamilton) that I will be able to help my elected successor immediately.

It seems though that all the correspondence that I should have been getting went away as soon as pervach left.
Admittedly, I had a major negative experience with some complete raving drunkard called Nick Taylor who has had bizarre accusations about me every single time he's come to a Pirate Party wellington meetup, or even going to far as to hassle me on email persistently several times over a weekend.

However, I will now mention the positive points I will make after my position on the board runs out for the sake of @hubatmcjuhes @benvidulich @davidpeterson and if @andrewreitemeyer wishes to write about it later, then that is fine.

1. I have been quietly developing a new cryptography system for dynamic messaging since 1998 when a local company did not want to hire me to create it. (Netlogic called it E-See and Bankonit.) It has gone through a dozen versions of improvements and I call it StormCloud mainly as a reference to the transfer types (ThunderStorm, HailStorm, SnowStorm, SandStorm)

2. StormCloud is designed to be the social network that has the GCSB wondering why they can't break the cryptography or the messaging platform, however if the bullshit conditions they work for with less than half the pay rate of the private sector is any indication of how moronic they are, then I'm confident they won't have any chance until 2140.

3. I have discussed the technical details of the basic infrastructure over the last five years with the people at telecomix.org (they are associated with TPB and anonymous), PPUS/PPCAN & an old schoolmate who has completed his doctorate on the maths of cryptography at auckland uni. None of the people I have dealt with has found any fault with the workings or details of the system.

4. There are also a few other projects I want to develop which are worth my time just for the academic satisfaction alone. So I will be working on those as well as the StormCloud network from next month.

The good people of telecomix are an extremely cool and clued up crowd. If they approve something, then it is certainly superb.
I am very curious about StormCloud and look forward to see it (pre-)released some time.

But in this discussion, @andrewmcpherson, let us focus on the missing transaction log of the party account. Maybe someone can make contact with the previous treasurer and with Pervach somehow to get end meet?

The last request I received for membership stats was a month ago. At that point we had 22 members, 9 of which count towards the 500 needed for registration.

@benvidulich WHAT?
A year or such ago, we had about 200 members! And just a couple of month ago we have heard rumours of skyrocketing numbers so that we could hope to make it over the 500 mark before end of April, right in time to register for the election!

Do you say that there have been about 180 people who have explicitly made statements to leave the party?

Or do you say that you have conclusive records only for those two dozens and you cannot determine the correct status of the other hundreds of members?

@davidpeterson mentioned that they had changed the automatic lapse of membership from one year to three years so that some old members (from memory 190) were retained. I have seen no evidence of this but I have not had time to go through the logs yet.

What counts is financially up to date members..

We have to hold these elections and 1. change the constitution and 2. start getting new members.

It is now up to the board to hold these elections as soon as possible or to hand that power over to the party. I see no real need for secret elections as we are so few. But will yield to anyone who wants that.

@andrewreitemeyer I completely agree with the order of things: 1) elections 2) updating constitution 3) membership drive.
But there is a necessary step before 1):
0) finding out who the members are that are eligible for nomination and voting.
My understanding is that the membership officer @benvidulich does not have all information needed to determin this group.

@hubatmcjuhes Unless the board can provide evidence that a decision was made to change the membership renewal time from one year to three years then all @benvidulich needs is the list of members who are financially up to date.
He could make an announcement on the announce list warning people who wish to take part to make sure they are paid up.

@andrewreitemeyer That's true. It's just that the treasurer @andrewmcpherson is unable to produce the list of financially up-to-date members because he doesn't have access to any financial transaction records from the time before he took over office wich was about half a year ago or so.

@hubatmcjuhes : Which is what the problem has been for the last year, I did not have access to the previous party account, nor was I able to get much response out of the previous treasurer.
@andrewreitemeyer : the board previously decided to change the membership renewal forms 2 or 3 years ago.

Basically, all our membership issues used to be handled by tommy f, but when he moved back to auckland, the board lost a great deal of knowledge.

In the worst case scenario is when there are no elections by 14th October the board is in default and the membership can take over.
Does anyone in this conversation have access to the announce list?

Mind you, @andrewreitemeyer, all board members participating in this discussion have signaled support for new elections now. There is no reason to discuss such a worst case scenario.
The problem that we a re facing right now would be the very same in October anyway: We don't know who our members are. So we don't know who is eligible to vote. And if we don't find a way to find out, we will not know in October either.

@benvidulich Do you have records for all membership forms handed in throughout the years and only miss the information of the payments? Or are the historical member records lost completely and you really only have contact information once someone has signed in though the online form?

@hubatmcjuhes yes they express support but I see no action being taken only statements that there are higher priorities. It is in the statute that the board can appoint members to the board. It would be possible for the board to appoint all willing members to the board for the purpose of organising elections.

@andrewreitemeyer I'm surprised you oppose privacy during an election!

@davidpeterson I am not against secret voting but believe it can be dispensed with. When the officials who should be running the elections seem to be doing everything to delay and prevent them taking place then we may be left with no alternative.

Perhaps a day away from facebook would free up enough time for board members to do the job they were elected to do.

@andrewreitemeyer Yes, if the board would appoint someone with the official authorisation to organise things and that is approachable by all willing to help, that would be a step forward.

While I would much prefer someone else to take that duty over, I would stand for this office if this helps to get things going.
I hope, others stand for this as well.

@davidpeterson: may I ask you to get in contact with the other board members and get something along these lines going, please?
Now would be a good time. It's your weekly meeting time, isn't it?

@hubatmcjuhes yes, and I sent a few emails earlier today on these topics. One set of emails to remind people about today's meeting, and the other to chase up the membership situation.

Though once again, it appears I'm the only person on #ppnzboard tonight.

@davidpeterson So you are not only not meeting on a regular basis, but you (as a board) are also not able to meet at all, even on an exceptional, urgent matter?

Would you think it would be an accurate description to say: the board does actually not exist?

I hate to be impatient but I have people lined up to join but I don't want them joining a dysfunctional party

We can hold a secret ballot by any of the various secret voting sites like http://www.decing.com/

I am willing to stand as a board member and would like to see an expanded board to deal with the constitutional problems. In fact a board consisting of all financial members might be a solution,.

@hubatmcjuhes, not at all true. For one, I'm active.

@davidpeterson I know that you are active. But the board can only make decisions on a meeting all board members have been invited to in advance (e.g. by schedule) and there are >= 3 present. If this is not achievable, then the board effectively does not exist. That's what I mean.

Can you give us an idea at what point in time the board has been able to make a decision lately?

@andrewreitemeyer I would stand as well. The more the better. But nominees must accept their nomination in writing, as far as I understand our current constitution.

BTW: we are still to find out who our financial members are.

I have been talking to David in Facebook - It seems there is no record of the decision to extend memberships to three years but he remembers it being 2012 or 2013. So is the decision valid if it is not documented. We have a record of board resolutions up to October 2013 but none of the them mention it. Two board members remember the decision being taken but is that enough? I do not think so as human memory is fallible.It could be that there was an intention to make the change but it was never actually carried out.

This makes the members who joined under the CiviCRM for three years either invalid or only valid for one year. In any case, once we have a functioning board, this issue must be addressed as a high priority.

If this is the case then only those who have renewed in the last year are valid financial members. We should be able to work out who those people are and we have our financial members. As no one has access to the announce list - see previous request for info - we can only ask lapsed members to renew over the normal list, face book etc,

Ok, I have a spreadsheet with an unknown amount of information about the past state of our memberships (~240 people) however it is likely that some have expired memberships (and haven't been contacted again) or their membership status is generally unclear (due to lack of details).

Due to the decision to switch memberships from one year to three years I have absolutely no idea how long people have been members and how long previous members should have their membership recognised for. The other confusing part is that MyPP makes all new memberships are set as being from the last Feb 20 until Feb 19 in 3 years time (so if you sign up today your membership will be from 20 Feb 2014 until 19 Feb 2017). This makes it easier for the membership admin(s) to manage memberships, but makes it confusing for everyone else.

Furthermore, it was agreed that due to the aforementioned difficulties that all members should sign up for an account on MyPP. Those that signed up and had previously became members within the past 1 year would have their membership status recognised within MyPP. Everyone else would essentially have to restart their membership.

Ok, have sent texts to daniel who should be meeting irl with ben tonight.
I should note that I am currently on holiday, and have been with limited charging options and for that reason hard to get connected to previous meeting.

Main points I'd like to make is to get new board up and running asap, would prefer to coopt @hubatmcjuhes and @andrewreitemeyer to the board immediately.

@davidpeterson I agree with you in that a new board cannot be elected in any other way than by a secret election mode.
The new board will have to revise the party constitution. And this cannot be done while anyone could possibly question the legitimacy of that board performing the groundbreaking changes.

@andrewreitemeyer I agree with you that we cannot expect the current board to be to able to organise a proper secret election. This simply will not happen. Fullstop. We have been asking for what progress in this area has been happening and we have not even received any kind of answer in one month.

This looks like a classic dead-lock situation.

To resolve this issue I suggest the following: Instead of electing a new board immediately on possibly weak grounds; let's instead elect a group of people to build a committee with a very reduced set of duties:
1) work out the group of people who is actually entitled to vote;
2) design a uniform platform for candidates of the new board to represent themselves to the membership;
3) set out an easy enough and otherwise reasonable protocol to secretly vote for the new board to come;
4) work with the current board members to prepare for an easy hand-over process.

If we would decide to instate such a task force, it would not need to fulfill all the requirements we would expect for a board. E.g.:
- there would not be a legal obligation of at least three members;
- a non-secret election of accepted task members would be easily justified, given the well defined reduced responsibilities;
- the resulting new board would found it's reputation on such a broad basis as no PPNZ board did before. This will be helpful when it comes to replace the current constitution with a new one.

As stated to @hubatmcjuhes IRL tonight, I am a board member who is willing to do whatever it takes to make the party move forward over the next week. I start university again on the 14th July, so after then I will have no time to commit to anything else until until November.

If we can get an election plan sorted in the next week, then I am happy to help out. Keep in mind that I have access to the ~240 members that existed before My Pirate Party so I could attempt to rally support from these members if you help to me formulate the message that I send to these members (in a new discussion).

If @benvidulich , @andrewmcpherson and myself all show at the next board meeting then we'll have quorum and can sort this out.

Alright. I might even be able to meet with @davidpeterson IRL if I can get from papakura to downtown this week.

I'm keen to get this board meeting sorted.

What motion(s) do you suggest, @davidpeterson ? Also: when and where will that meeting be?

@hubatmcjuhes , you mean the board meetings? It is always on IRC.

@andrewmcpherson that would be great! Drop me a msg on FB if you're coming.

@davidpeterson The time and channel, please.
BTW: If you plan to wait until Thursday, I assume that would be too late, given that you seem to think that without @benvidulich and @andrewmcpherson you will not be able to get 3 together. @benvidulich will not be available anymore from the next week onwards. You people must HURRY.

And I would strongly suggest to start discussing your plans here ASAP.

Any night this week would be best then. As it stands, I should be available Tuesday night and probably Wednesday night would be second pref.
Thursday or Friday night would probably be too late, but I will be unavailable Saturday night, and will not be home till Sunday afternoon.

I have outlined what I think needs to be done as a minimum to @hubatmcjuhes in a few texts, which I will repost here in the next post after this biobreak.

Andrew and I have sorted out a time and place for a IRL meeting, and put it up on the FB group and FB page, as well as on IRC.

@benvidulich , could you join us via IRC perhaps? That way we'll reach quorum for a board meeting.

auckland pirates meetup irl sptting feathers bar, 630 till 10 maybe. I will be there with @davidpeterson and will be online.

Event details on FB https://www.facebook.com/events/336287126525277/

What's up, @davidpeterson, @andrewmcpherson , where are you? Which channel are you on? What's the agenda? What's happening?

While I am in Auckland on holiday, @davidpeterson and I will be meeting up with Auckland Pirates at the Spitting Feathers bar Wednesday night at 630 till 10 maybe? (depends on Auckland trains I guess), we will be on irc and email.

Agenda should be set by @davidpeterson , but I will press for the urgent matter of the large expense of webhosting, which appears to have been organised by @terryjones at an exorbitant rate.
Realistically, as we can not justify wasting our last reserves over a few months of webhosting in a datacenter in Auckland CBD @46.70 per month... I am returning to advocate hosting from my server in Miramar Wellington, which has been upgraded with a new 1TB SSD along with the original HDD retained.

I am prepared to host the website dedicated with 1 i5 core @ 3.1 GHz, 4GB ram, 50 GB Ubuntu server 14.04 Virtual Machine, with unlimited traffic and fastest vodafone cable internet (going to fastest vodafone fibre internet when the fibre is ready to get.)

The second item on the agenda is that we have been requested to get all members to rejoin for the purposes of our records requiring correct and accurate details of financial membership. This will be only a $2 membership, or $2 + voluntary donation, as the request leads to item three:

The third item on the agenda is that we need to start the nominations this week, ideally before sunday to fit in with @benvidulich return to uni on monday.

Item four is that we need to hold board elections asap, so ideally we need to do this once we have had time for people to rejoin and return to our records of membership.

I personally think that we need to have a new board within a month, I do not think we will end up so disfunction that we need to immediately induct @hubatmcjuhes and @andrewreitemeyer to the board, however I believe that both of you would work well on the board.

When the board elections will be held, we will be emailing financial members the candidate list and the usual voting method information.

Thank you for letting us know 1,5 hours after the meeting today should have happened, that it has been postponed. This comment is not against you, @andrew, as you actually at least told us. But this would have been @davidpeterson s duty, who has until now not even bothered to tell @benvidulich and invite him for tomorrow. I wonder how he expects to find enough board members at that meeting if he not even invites them!

I am pleased to see that you are in good hopes that the board, that was not able to meet in the last half a year is now empowering itself to organise a proper transition. I very much hope, you can make it. (This episode today does not help very much to convince me, so).

I was invited, but was under the impression it was today, not tomorrow. The double event thing makes things confusing though,

Thank you @andrewmcpherson for outlying the agenda for the meeting. This is very much appreciated.

Indeed, it includes the most pressing points. I hope you find good answers to all of them.

Regarding your offer to host our infrastructure privately: While I again very much appreciate the offer, I do believe that private hosting cannot be a solution. It is just not right for a political party to do such a thing.

We might be able to catch up with PPAU, maybe, and check if we can share resources with them...?!?

I'm a bit offended... I've put effort into promoting this in multiple ways, as otherwise it would've just been an informal IRL meetup between Andrew and I (but I took the initiative to turn it into something more, and open it up to any other locals to come along to as well) & never told anybody a wrong date.

@davidpeterson Do you say that when you invited @benvidulich 21 hours ago that the event https://www.facebook.com/events/336287126525277/ then showed the date of tomorrow?

I would have been certain that I read it was announced to be today. And obviously, as you can read above, @benvidulich was either.

If I am wrong, I do apologies for my harsh wording (even though I am a bit surprised that you are so sensitive in this area, as you certainly are a friend of provocative wording for yourself).

In any case: I wish you all the very best to resolve the current issues, as there are many and they weigh heavily.

We had the date clearly shown on the facebook event, which was posted there on monday night. Admittedly it was late that evening that I posted a link to the event (around midnight), so my apologies if you had not followed the facebook link to the event, which is on tonight (wednesday) irl in auckland and online also.

As @hubatmcjuhes and @davidpeterson are bound to note that private hosting is not acceptable for a political party, I would note that it is what we originally did at the beginning of the pirateparty, which @brucekingsbury and I both offered to do so. The only difference now is that I have a more reliable server and five more years experience with computers (now 34 years experience).

As treasurer, I would be remiss in my duties to the party if we were to retain datacenter hosting above $10 per month, let alone the exorbitant rate of $46.70 which was signed up to without any vetting by board members who knew what the cost should be for our needs.
If we had several thousand $ of funds, there would be no pressing issue to change, but we are not in a position to burn all our party funds on 4 months of webhosting in a datacenter in the auckland cbd.

It is highly irrational that we as a party go to such excessive costs on webhosting, just so we can say we can say "we have 24 hour access to the data if a board member from auckland can drive there, find a park, has the swipe card, enters the login password to the machine, then remembers how to fix the problem."

Whereas, with my proposal of private hosting, we have better, cheaper, faster hosting with unlimited traffic with a co-founder of the ppnz who is contactable 24 hours a day by text and email, and will spend most of the day on the host system programming.

@andrewmcpherson, @davidpeterson So as you say that the fb event was set to the right date from the outset, then my apologies stand. It would have helped if you had added the date to the time mentioned in this thread, though. I am still confused how @benvidulich and I could independently get the wrong impression from the fb announcement. :-?

So, once again: @davidpeterson: my sincere apologies and thanks for making this meeting possible.

@andrewmcpherson I completely agree that the expensive hosting must come to an end ASAP and terminating the contract immediately is a high priority goal and one of the most pressing issues.

I have to admit, that private hosting might be needed to be considered if otherwise we loose our representation in the net completely.

I just would want to make sure that this can only be the absolute last resort and that we should try to find a better option. Collaborating with PPAU could be a very fine one as not only could it help keeing our (and their) costs down, also they are having a dedicated IT team working on exactly the same tools that we would like to use.

@davidpeterson has suggested to (or is planning to) organise regular elections only for the President, Party Secretary, and Communications Officer, and only if the current but unavailable bearers of that roles don't claim them in the next two weeks. So he doesn't consider election for his own and @andrewmcpherson positions.

He has not explained how he justifies his plan to extend the period over the normal period of 1 year to the shear maximum that the constitution allows (15 mth).

This filling up of vacant positions rather than a regular full board election will require us to go through the pain of nominations and voting again in only 2 month time.

I don't think that this is a good idea and I don't think that more than himself think so. But we don't really know. So I think we should decide on this matter here.

@davidpeterson has argued that this plan would be based on the constitution, Article 4, 2.4.:

In the event a member of the Executive Council is unable or unwilling to perform their duties, the remaining members of the Executive Council may declare the position vacant and appoint an interim replacement by two-thirds majority vote of the remaining members of the Executive Council. As soon as possible, the members will elect a Member to fill that vacant position.

He argues that it would be extra democratic to not appoint those candidates though the remaining board members (which are two), but have them up for election instead.

I read, that the board would appoint someone (i.e. so that the board can operate without too much of a delay) - and then there should be an election ASAP.
So all what this suggestion is about is to not appoint those candidates, accepting the delay that comes with the vacancy, and directly go for those limited elections.

This is in complete ignorance of the fact that this board is not operational for half a year by now and it's regular period of one year is overstretched already.

I am trying hard, but I really cannot make any sense out of it.
Can somebody please help me and explain?
@davidpeterson, maybe?

@kirktwist
@terryjones
@robueberfeldt
@brucekingsbury
any input, maybe?

Is that so, mr vice president? (see attached)

Indeed. In the absence of the President the VP fulfils that role.

An update: I've sent the email (a rather lengthy one too) to the relevant persons informing them yesterday's decision and explaining the situation we're facing with the upcoming general election.

Additionally I met Tommy yesterday in person and asked him to be our returning officer for the board, as I promised to do in the meeting yesterday, which has has accepted which is great has a brings a lot of experience in the role of returning officer.

@benvidulich What is the context of that screenshot, please?

@andrewreitemeyer @davidpeterson has indeed argued for a rolling board with only half of the role to be elected on in half the time, rather than a regular full board election.
He agreed that that would be something only a full board could possibly decide on. I hope, he didn't think, the provisional, fillled up board could/would do that. Any comments, @davidpeterson ?

@davidpeterson what situation are we facing with the upcoming general election?
We are not facing the general election. We are not part of it. Even if we where 500 rather than 2 dozens, the time to register is over. You could have been facing this situation half a year ago, when we had big discussions here and your only participation was to say there would be hope.

Explain, what the general election has to do with us or otherwise don't pretend it would be a significant part of some well kept serious argument any more, please.

@hubatmcjuhes https://www.facebook.com/DavidPetersonNZ/posts/10152337826947909

I got a message from David late last night to join IRC to make a decision on the board.

Whoever is doing the notifications needs to send direct messages to people. Posting on Fb page that a meeting will happen doesn't cut it.

Messages to peoples direct e-mail, FB private messages or chuck it onto their home page.

TBH I'm pretty far removed from all of this and have very little interest. I see the party as dysfunctional. I have put up my hand for ALCP candidacy and expect to run for them in the election. I will continue to help maintain the PP open page. Hopefully next elections will be more friendly to the PPNZ and the IP-Mana group will settled so we will know if we can work with them.

The purpose of a democratically elected board is to create a balance between decentralisation and dictatorship. The VP position comes to a vote eventually however this situation pans out, and the voting method allows for no confidence votes so a seat can remain empty if the only or successful candidate is no longer well regarded.

I'm finding this whole discussion odd and completely missing the point of having a board, but at least as Craig pointed out he sees the purpose.

To me I see it as fairly simple, if the board was fully functional then we'd be running through from now till the end of the general election when we'd then be having the full elections for the whole board. But if before then a position is vacant on the board, we'd appoint a replacement.

It doesn't get any simpler than that. You can disagree with the assessment I've made, but that is the purpose of the board here to do this.

I have at every step gone above the call of duty, in more widely advertising the meeting, giving the vacant positions a grace period in which to reply, and using elections of the supporters to guide their replacement appointments. Yet I'm getting nothing but grief for it. (if you wonder why our full boards never last the full term, and why we get so few people putting their hand up for it, you're staring at a reason right now)

@robueberfeldt good to hear you're still going to be involved in the general elections and you're standing as a candidate! Sorry to hear though we've lost your confidence :-/

As I have stated at the meeting on Wednesday, that I do not mind either way.
I will stand again for Treasurer and we should have no problem with running from a free web host at an Auckland datacenter.

I am currently on holiday, and returning this weekend to Wellington, so am giving apology for not attending mmorpg.

As I have stated at the meeting on Wednesday, that I do not mind either way.
I will stand again for Treasurer and we should have no problem with running from a free web host at an Auckland datacenter.

I am currently on holiday, and returning this weekend to Wellington, so am giving apology for not attending mmorpg.

Perhaps I was too subtle, David. You could become the candidate that's not well regarded if you continue behaving like this.

I very well understand your feelings towards PPNZ, @robuberfeld. I very much hope we can fix the party to a state that you, like others that have already turned away from it, would want to engage again.
In your case that may very well be as a dialogue between two parties, apparently. I wish you very well with your candidacy with the ALPC.
I became a member of the ALPC as well as of the New Economics party some time this year as an expression of support. But I very clearly see myself as part of the world wide pirate movement and cannot turn away from PPNZ.

I am more than happy to wish you best luck, ad I hope you wouldn't mind seeing us soon (when we have recovered).

But if you are still a member of the PPNZ, you may want to help us by participating in those elections to come. Your expertise is valuable to us.

Cheers

@davidpeterson Wow, what a lengthy comment you have prepared for us to enjoy. Thank you very much. In the haystack of pathetic whining I cannot find the tiniest argument for why you or anybody else should prefer partial elections over a full board election.

BRING IT ON!

What do you even mean with: 'I’m finding this whole discussion odd and completely missing the point of having a board', @davidpeterson ?

The board is a shortcut for Executive Committee. As a committee it is a subset of the membership, set up by the membership, for the purpose to execute the memberships will.

What the heck might your point be? We don't know because you are not telling us what drives you.

The membership has expressed it's will very clearly in the first decision made in this thread. It has been decided that the board must be re-elected. Not some time in the future, but now. Not parts of it, the complete board. Who ever wants to change that decision would need to convince at least 5 of those 9 members. What is moot about that? So you might want to start trying?

BRING IT ON!

Today was the monthly MMOPRG. @davidpeterson was also present but again refused to explain his reasonings.

Anyway, as it turns out, the weight of his position is not higher than that of any other member of the party.

We have learned that the board has failed to file the readily prepared IncSoc document. All signatures and pre-requisites have been acquired, but the final document has simply not been posted to the authorities. Hence the PPNZ is not a formally registered society as we have been made thinking.
I think this can count as a major scandal. But this aspect would be off-topic in this thread.

In-Topic is the aspect that since we are not a registered society, our current constitution happens to bind us only to that degree that we, the membership, see fit. Our board (be it full or partial) has only as much authority over the organisation as we acknowledge and respect it's decisions. There is exactly zero legal bindings involved.

So we don't need to waste more time on trying to convince @davidpeterson to fulfill our wishes. We can simply move on with the preparations of the election of the new board.