Council of Elrond Charter 2.0

[thorondor]

Council of Elrond Charter 2011

We, the members of the Council of Elrond, re-charter the Council of Elrond, in order to better meet the needs of an evolving community in facilitating organized play and ameliorating the playing environment.

The composition, scope and powers of this Council are delineated in the following manner:

I. Composition of the Council:
a) The Council shall be comprised of nine voting members.
- The number of seats up for election each election shall be eight. The Chair is not up for election.
b) The term of office shall be twenty-four months.
- In the event that a member is not able to bring his term to completion, the Council shall appoint a new member chosen from the last election's candidates or from non-voting council members.
- Election procedures for a new session of the Council shall be started 23 months after the appointment of the current Council.

II. Method of election to the Council:
a) Electorate: Each individual member of the active player’s community, as defined by
membership of the Council of Elrond community discussion platform (currently: http://www.councilofelrond.org/forum), will have the right to cast votes in this election.
b) Procedure: All candidates will be listed on the Council of Elrond forum. The Council shall appoint an independent non-Council member to maintain this list and monitor the votes.
- The Chair and current Council will endeavor to find ten or more candidates within the time frame of one month after the announcement of elections. If nine or eight people run for election, the size of the Council will be decreased to seven members. If seven people or fewer people run for election, the election will be postponed for six months.
- Each constituent must cast votes for eight candidates (one per candidate), if ten or more people run. If nine or eight people run, each constituent must cast seven votes.

III. Tasks of the Council:
a) Formal decisions: Upon seating the newly elected Council, the first order of business
of each session of the Council shall be the election of a Vice Chair from amongst their midst. The last order of business of a given session of the Council shall be the selection of next session's Chair.
- Each active (national) council recognized by the Council of Elrond may appoint a non-voting spokesperson who shall take part in Council debates (referred to as non-voting Council-members).
- The Council of Elrond may further appoint non-voting experts to participate in their debates (referred to as non-voting Council-members).
b) Promoting the game: The Council shall endeavor to promote the playing of meccg and to maintain a solid player base.
- The Council shall maintain a player’s directory and a list of contacts for various nations in the absence of a National Council for the nation.
- The Council shall authorize a World’s Tournament for the game once a year, and shall decide upon a suitable venue (city).
- The Council shall further authorize and encourage online tournaments.
- The Council shall encourage tournament participation by offering special prizes at Council-sanctioned events.
c) Platform and informing the community: The Council shall maintain a web site (currently: http://www.councilofelrond.org) and community discussion platform. On such web site information shall be included on how to organize a council and how to gain recognition from this Council, as well as a compendium of the rules of meccg (Universal Rules Document) and useful information for beginning players.
- The Council will provide and host a subforum for any recognized National Council that requests and has need of such.
- The Chair of the Council shall provide a bimonthly newsletter detailing important information regarding the Council as well as events of interest to the community in general. This newsletter will be a compilation of input from all members of the community.

IV. Powers of the Council:
a) Rulings and clarifications: The Council shall maintain at least one spokesperson during each session whose duties shall consist of clarifying rules, interpreting card texts, adjudicating rules disputes, clarifying gameplay questions posed to the Council, adjudicating conflicts between cards, updating the Universal Rules Document, and forwarding any issues to the Errata Team. The title of said office shall be NetRep.
- The NetRep shall publish a rulings digest bimonthly, as well as update the Universal Rules Document. If no new rulings are to be made, the NetRep shall inform the Chair of such.
b) Errata: The Council shall issue errata or rules changes as needed in order to perform her tasks.
- A team of three experts will be appointed by the Council to discuss all rules changes. This team shall include the NetRep.
- Any erratum proposed by the Council shall be placed before a vote by the active players’ community: any individual member of the Council of Elrond forum may cast one vote. The proposal shall be accepted and ratified, if no more than one third of the possible votes (34% of the electorate) or half of the actual votes cast (51%) result in a “nay”. The voting period shall be 3 weeks.
- The Chair shall be responsible for announcing, maintaining, and monitoring the vote. Rules so ratified shall be considered in force when announced in the next Newsletter from the Chair.

V. The Council of Elrond Charter 2005 and its amendments shall remain in effect concerning
all matters not addressed in the Council of Elrond Charter 2011.

- Ratification of this Charter shall become effective after a closed vote by the active players’ community, if no more than one third of the possible votes (34% of the electorate) or half of the actual votes cast (51%) result in a “nay”. This vote shall take place during three weeks, announced by the Chair after the appointment of the new Council in 2011.

[thorondor]

the original COE Charter can be foun dhere: http://www.councilofelrond.org/index.php?id=2

i would like to point out one thing:
when it comes to rules changes and modifications to the COE charter, the old (and currently still effective) version speaks about the need of a voting using the metw@silent-tower.org-list. since this one is dead since a lot of years, we had to find something else. for obvious reasons the voting is going to happen here in the COE forum.