Image that we had a U.S. president and cabinet who didn’t like our form of government. Their argument would be that, at our founding, we had slaves and free African residents who could not vote. In fact, the slaves were only counted as 3/5 of a person for representation. Furthermore women were not allowed to vote until 1920. Imagine, then, that this cabinet just decided that the Constitution was void because of “illegal voting”. Imagine that they skipped going through a national referendum, the amendment process, or a constitutional convention. They didn’t even have a bill in Congress. They just passed it with a vote in the cabinet and issued an executive order. At that moment, in their view, the nation doesn’t exist, and it can then be taken over by foreign powers, or whatever.
This is essentially what happened, in miniature, when our SAEPOA board decided that our governance was void since 1995 because of the automatic “yes” vote clause in our bylaws. We the SAEPOA residents should be the only ones to decide this. Bylaws changes require a 2/3 vote of the membership by written ballot.
I call on our leadership to the priniciples they claim that we must follow.
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