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Constitution

United by the common desire for a friendly, fair, safe and fun environment, we the people do establish an organized on-line community, whose members are bound together by trust, honesty, friendship and common values. In order to maintain and protect this community, we declare our conviction in this Constitution of the Angels of Hell.

The ultimate power of the community belongs to the members, with all members having equal voice in decisions that will affect the well-being of the union. To administer the activities of the community, the members will elect a council of nine members who serve six month terms. Every two months there will be an election of one third of the positions of council and to fill any unexpired vacant terms. Each member may vote for as many candidates as there are seats to be filled and will have ten days in which to vote. Council terms will be filled from longest to shortest in order of vote totals and take effect immediately upon the conclusion of the election. All members will be on the ballot, except those who explicitly opt-out beforehand. Council members may be re-elected if the members so desire. Elections will be held for ten days starting the first day of every even month, with the new council taking office on the 11th.

The council shall conduct the essential business of the community. This includes the appointment of members to organize committees which perform functions beneficial to the membership. The number, purpose, and leaders of said committees are at the discretion of the council; however, no member will be the leader of more than one committee, and council members shall abstain from voting on motions which make themselves leaders of committees. The leader of each committee is responsible for that committee and is the ruling body of that committee.

An executive shall be elected by the council members. The executive shall have the ability and responsibility to call meetings or votes. No one may serve more than one executive term in any six month period. The term of executive lasts until the next council election; a new executive will be selected immediately after each council election.

A council vote may be called by the council executive or is called at the request of any three members of the council. A motion passes the council if it either gathers a majority of the votes cast within three days of notification of the vote or it gathers the agreement of more than half of the council's current membership.

Some rights are reserved exclusively by the general membership. These include expulsion of members, passage of amendments to the constitution, and removal for cause of a member from the council. A council removal requires a simple majority, while expulsion and amendments require a two-thirds majority. All members will be allowed ten days to submit their votes. On motions for expulsion of members or removal of council members, votes may not be cast until after three days of discussion. A motion may be put before the membership either by a majority vote of the council or by petition. A petition requires the support of twenty members or by members numbering at least one-fifth of the votes cast in the last election.

If three council seats become vacant and there are more than twenty-one days remaining before the start of the next election, a special election will be held immediately to fill the unexpired terms using the same procedure as a normal election. This will ensure that the council consists of currently active members, so that the concerns of the members may be addressed in a timely manner.

For the purpose of settling ties in council elections, a tie-breaking list will be maintained. This list will rank all members based on their previous election results, which will already have its ties broken. Upon acceptance into the community, new members will be added to the bottom of this list.

Transition Plan

The intial election will be held for a 10 day period commencing the day after ratification. The first regular election will begin of the first day of the first even month at least 45 days after ratification.

In order to evenly distribute vote winners over separate initial term lengths, the candidates will be gathered in groups of 1-5-9 (1st place vote-getter, 5th place, etc.), 2-6-7, and 3-4-8; each of these groups will then be randomly assigned to the available term lengths of 2, 4, and 6 months.

In the voting for initial council, the tie break list will be ordered by

1) votes in the CC election

2) the participation as a voter in the CC election

3) endeavor ranking.

Suggested method for generating a random number in the above assignment: totalling the votes received by the winners and dividing it in such a way to get the proper random number range.


Amendment 1. Council will immediately elect an executive if the position becomes open more than fourteen days before a council election. The term of this executive will be until the end of the next council election; if this term is less than thirty days, it will not be used to prevent the same individual serving as executive at a later time. This expands and clarifies paragraph 4 in the case of an executive that resigns or is otherwise unable to perform his/her duty.

Amendment 2. Newly elected council members take office immediately at the end of an election. Previous mention of "the 11th" is removed. This applies to paragraph 2. The last sentence: "Elections will be held for ten days starting the first day of every even month, with the new council taking office on the 11th." is replace with "Elections will be held for ten days starting the first day of every even month, with the new council taking office immediately".

Amendment 3. A council motion passes when it has more approval votes than rejection votes during the voting period; it fails otherwise. Open seats and declared abstentions reduce the number of possible votes cast. Voting ends when approval or rejection votes number more than half of the possible votes; otherwise voting ends after five days. This expands, clarifies and supercedes paragraph 5. It handles the case where only 1 or 2 votes are cast and automatically tables motions over 5 days old.