Participants: JL Barzallo, Wladimir Davalos, JL Salgueiro, Antonio Medina, Dev Anand, C Samuel, A Piazza, S Salinas, C Aguirre, Cristian Casas, V Scartezini
Staff: M Langenegger, H Ullrich, N Ashton-Hart
C Samuel moved that the usual agenda items be suspended in order to deal with the LACRALO GA vote issue regarding the certification of the new LACRALO Chair. He was seconded by Dev. C Samuel announced that there had been a mathematical error during the calculation process of the weighted votes for the post of the LACRALO chair at the Mexico General Assembly and the corrected result shows that A Piazza was the elected president.
This was contested by S Salinas and some of the participants. S Salinas questioned the legitimacy of C Samuel for presiding the meeting as his term of office had officially ended at Mexico. He also claimed that he required seeing the proxies counted at the GA.
C Samuel clarified that as the returning officer presiding at Mexico; it was his duty to certify the election returns. The raw votes - meaning the hands raised in favor of one or other candidate – had been counted and recorded by M. Langenegger of At-Large Staff. M Langenegger, upon C Samuel’s direction, had read again all the raw votes as he had recorded them and all the members at the GA had their opportunity to hear their votes and correct the record. According to the rules of procedure for LACRALO, each country had been allocated the same percentage of the vote - the more ALS there was in a country, the smaller the weight of the individual ALS vote was (country coefficient). In assigning value to each vote, a mistake was made and no value had been given to the Devnet proxy vote.Because of it, a wrong result of the vote had been communicated by the returning officer, wrongly naming Sergio Salinas Porto the Chair of LACRALO. According to the formula for calculating the weighted votes, each country has 7.6 percent of the vote and each ALS has a percentage of that based on the number of ALS in its country. By mistake, Devnet proxy vote had not been transferred into the coefficient table for the calculation at the GA. Therefore, the weights had been calculated wrongly, and as the Returning Officer for the election, he had the duty to indicate that and also to indicate the correct result of the calculated vote. The returning officer is usually in charge of the election results until they are checked and certified.
JL Barzallo disagreed with the conclusion maintaining that the GA preliminary announcement had sovereign authority.
C Aguirre agreed with the decision of C Samuel and expressed that there should be a special provision in the rules for that specific situation in the future. He also pointed out that mistakes were human and that there had been no foul intention but was an unfortunate accident.
N Ashton-Hart from staff stated that the recording of the GA had been reviewed since the GA and it was audibly the case that devnet vote had been mentioned during the GA voting process. The error had been discovered when they had compared the audio recording with the recorded votes of the preliminary election of the GA. Devnet vote was valid and had been cast during the GA.
C Aguirre said he could testify that he had been present when C Samuel stated that he had three proxies and also during the whole meeting and that nobody had questioned the proxies at the time. He had also witnessed that C Samuel had cast his personal vote in favor of J Salinas. He added that he had questioned the preliminary GA result since the onset and asked staff for verification. The real result of the votes had to be respected and verified again.
C Samuel assured any other vote proven to be undervalued would also be examined. Therefore he urged each ALS to verify the record of their vote and listen to the recordings soon to be published on the list as well as verify the proxies. V Scartezini agreed that if valid, Devnet vote had to be counted into the election result.
All the votes cast at the GA are valid and have been duly recorded; the error is only of mathematical nature.
S Salinas required that the 32 ALS take part in the discussion through the list.
V Scartezini suggested having a transcript of the meeting as a definite proof.
C Samuel agreed and reminded that there had already been documents circulated through the list which showed the destination and the author of each vote. He decided that the transcript of the record would be published on the list and then there could be a formal certification of the GA results.
Nick Ashton-Hart apologized to both candidates on behalf of the staff. He added that the speaker’s names were not announced on the English GA recording and that they would have to check the Spanish recording also. The section with the casting of the votes starts at 2h57 minutes.
S Salinas required having a third party such as an international organization to analyze the recording, the emails and the whole process to certify the final vote.
C Samuel reminded that LACRALO was made of volunteers. He reminded once again that it was in the tabulation of the votes that there had been a mistake and it was due to staff’s mistake at applying the formula for weights. M Langenegger has acknowledged it. From the onset, C Aguirre had questioned the result suspecting some arithmetical problem and he turned out to be right. Mistakes can happen in tabulations. As presiding officer, C Samuel agrees to take responsibility for it but to bring a third party would suggest some conspiracy being suspected. Before thinking of having independent examination for transparency, members are urged to make sure their vote has been recorded properly by checking the recordings. The proxies will be circulated through the discussion list for everyone to see them.
Nick Ashton-Hart reminded that, after checking, those who would still feel the need for a third party could raise their claim to the ombudsman.
C Samuel concluded that the recordings in English and Spanish would be formally linked on the discussion list. Those objecting should audit the results as published and had a duty of care to certify your own vote.
There was some questioning from a member about the proxy of AUI-Peru.
C Samuel said that the rules of procedure established that the proxy had to be given to him beforehand. He had not received their proxy but would check again.
He reminded the members that his personal duty was to certify the vote but he had no other obligations such as to deliver a special report. He was just delaying certification to satisfy the members that the mistake made had been accidental.
The meeting was then adjourned so as to allow the members to consult all the documents before proceeding to the certification at the next meeting.
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