The Ballot Prep sub-Committee (BPC) was set up to examine the current Ballot procedures for the ACA Fellowship. Since being appointed Chair of the BPC after the 2016 ABC conference the committee has attracted 8 members and a few members have already made suggestions to the committee.
The BPC is looking to make current procedures and submission deadlines clearly worded, translated, and available online and in the COM LINE to the ACA fellowship as soon as possible as a means of encouraging increased participation in the next annual Group Conscience Survey (GCS).
ACA is one of the few, if not the only, 12 Step fellowships to allow individual groups and Intergroups to submit proposals directly to the WSO for the annual ABC Delegates to vote on without going through some level of regional or area balloting first. Currently there are no provisions in the current procedures for the handling of proposals that are:
1. Items already in committee or under WSO Board consideration
2. Items that seem to fall under the 4th Tradition
3. Items that appear to be possible regional or cultural issues
4. Items that are restated in several separate proposals or seem to be nonsensical
In addition, the online submission process, coupled with the current low group response rate, makes it easy for someone to submit a proposal that appears to be from a registered group and that group’s conscience was never taken before the proposal was submitted.
Developing guidelines to process proposals like these will save the limited resources of the ACA Fellowship and WSO Board, both in time and money, permitting those limited resources to be used elsewhere to carry the ACA message.
Thank you for the opportunity to serve
Tom R. Chairman, BPC Committee
[email protected]
