Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: who gets to vote

[Ruby44444 (Ruby44444]

To answer Robin Allison's question about who votes if it comes down to a 75%
vote:
At Pioneer Valley we wrote into the bylaws that before we would revert to
voting we would hire a trained mediator.
If the mediation fails, the vote would be of members who own houses.  The
rationale is that house owners have a much larger stake in the community.
Associate members can be part of discussions and the shaping of the consensus,
but can't block it.
I think that it is very easy for people brought up in competitive, voting
societies to bend the consensus process a little so that it resembles
voting--campaingning for ones own point of view, treating a test for consensus
as a straw poll, thinking in terms of winning/losing, etc--and it's necessary
to do as much education as possible, and build into your structure everything
you can to maintain the spirit of consensus: that everyone has a piece of the
truth.  That's why we put in our bylaw.  Otherwise, it's possible that voting
could be reverted to out of anger, or as a way to manipulate people and
outcomes.
Rebecca