Proposals

[Andreas Oberritter]

On 20.10.2011 22:36, Graeme Gregory wrote:
> On 20/10/11 21:32, Andreas Oberritter wrote:
>> On 20.10.2011 16:38, Richard Purdie wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2011-10-19 at 14:41 +0200, Holger Hans Peter Freyther wrote:
>>>> On 10/19/2011 02:38 PM, Philip Balister wrote:
>>>>> Can someone prepare text for us to vote for relaxing the attendance
>>>>> and
>>>>> proxy requirements?
>>>> Do you have specific limits in mind? attendance requirement as in
>>>> physical
>>>> presence (I assume this can not be relaxed)? Proxy requirements?
>>>> allowing more
>>>> people to be proxy?
>>> Just to summarise, I believe our existing statutes require that:
>>>
>>> a) Each person is limited to acting as a proxy for 2 other people.
>>> b) People have to attend a GA at least once every two years or they risk
>>> becoming extraordinary members of the GA and lose voting rights.
>>>
>>> The proposals are to:
>>>
>>> a) Increase the number of people a person can proxy for from 2 to 4
>> What about section 38 of the German civil code? It reads:
>>
>> "Membership is not transferable and not inheritable. The exercise of
>> membership rights cannot be entrusted to another person."
>>
>> In my understanding, this means that it's illegal to act as a proxy to
>> vote for someone else.
>>
>>
> A proxy is not transferring your membership rights, it is merely the act
> of asking someone to represent you. It is no different to email being a
> proxy for voting on internet votes.

It is very well different, because an internet vote is actually bound to
a topic. An email just transfers my ballot. A proxy doesn't - at least
not with the proxy form I've seen.

I wasn't saying that you're transfering membership to a proxy, but a
proxy *excercises another person's membership rights*, because
eventually the proxy decides how to use another person's vote. Voting is
one of the most essential membership rights. I don't understand how this
could be interpreted in another way.

> I would be VERY surprised if your
> interpretation was correct. Especially as our statutes are very similar
> to other German eV such as KDE.

Law cannot be overridden by statutes. Just because they are similar to
KDE's, they aren't error-free by definition. I'm pretty sure that the
register of associations doesn't verify the validity of statutes either.

Regards,
Andreas