Hi,
From my opinion that is too much. No more than 250-300 members are usually attending GM, even with the electronic voting. And 2% threshold means ~50% of active members, so there is no possibility to raise any question to the GM level.
I'd rather increase the level of participation such that 2% of the members is not of the same order of magnitude as the number of members that cast a vote. However, stepping outside of the ivory tower...
And this is the reason for my proposal: to change the threshold in the section 15.6 of AoA to 0.3% or to 30 or 40 members.
I am slightly worried that leaves the agenda open to hijacking. I am sure that, whilst not often, sometimes there have been people with close to that number of proxy votes in the past. How would we avoid a DoS (Denial of Social event) attack on a Wednesday evening? I could of course be worrying over nothing, and perhaps it is a sacrifice that needs to be made. Having said that, I would rather see the direct member suggestion of agenda items be left to significant events, ones that can get sufficient backing. The more usual route would be to ask the Executive Board to place items on the agenda -- either through this list or through direct lobbying of the EB. We vote the board in as our representatives, and we should only really need to manipulate the agenda directly if we don't feel the EB is doing that. That should be a rare event. All the best, Rob