LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2023, Page 184

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184

OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS
(a) This voters list shall include two voting delegates from each congregation in attendance at the
previous district conventions who remain members
of the congregations they represented:
(1) the pastor of each member congregation
or multi-congregation parish (assisting pastors
are not eligible)
(2) a lay person from the congregation or parish
(b) The congregation shall present to the Secretary
of Synod 90 days prior to the election a proper
credentials form provided by the Secretary, signed
by two of the congregation’s officers. If a congregation or parish has more than one pastor eligible
to vote, the congregation shall designate on the
credentials form which pastor will cast a vote on
behalf of the congregation.
(c) If one or both delegates are unavailable, congregations shall be provided opportunity to select
substitute voters up to a deadline designated by the
Secretary. [2016 Res. 11-03A, Proc., 196]
(d) The registration status of congregations shall be
made available to respective district presidents for
the sole purpose of their encouraging registration
for greater congregational participation. The registration status of congregations shall not be further
disseminated. [2019 Res. 9-16, Proc., 201]

The process adopted in 2010, because it relied on information from
district secretaries and not on direct registration by congregations,
involved no paper communication with the congregations themselves. In 2016, responding to dissatisfaction that congregations
that did not attend the district convention or had lost those who had
attended prior to the presidential vote were not able to vote in that
election, the bylaw was modified to require direct registration of
congregations with the Secretary of the Synod. The implementation specified was along the lines of other official ballot processes:
a proper credentials form, signed by two congregational officers.
This process involves a significant administrative burden, and mail
delay and data entry time do not readily facilitate timely and accurate reminders to congregations, especially as now required by
subparagraph (d). Prior to the 2016 change, there would have been
no obstacle to a completely electronic registration process; the
perhaps over-specified procedure dictated in 2016, however, may
be construed to present an obstacle—even though the 2016 action
evidences no intent to create such an obstacle, but perhaps rather a
default impression of how another such process might be modeled
on existing methods of the time.
Question B:

Does the language of Bylaw 3.12.2.3 (b) preclude
implementation of presidential voter registration by
a secure and verifiable electronic means, requiring
participation of congregational officers and their
affidavit that the registration is taken as an official
congregational action?

Opinion: The process adopted at the 2010 convention (2010 Bylaw
3.12.2.3) established means by which the list of eligible voters for
the election of the President of the Synod was to be submitted by
2023 Convention Workbook

the secretary of each district of the Synod. This list was comprised
of the voting delegates who had attended their respective district
conventions. When the process was changed by the 2016 convention (2016 Res. 11-03A) to require instead the direct registration
of voters by congregations, the wording used in Bylaw 3.12.2.3
(b) replicated the wording of Bylaw 4.2.2 (a), which described the
certification, by congregational officers, of their congregation’s
designation of voting delegates to a district convention.
Bylaw 3.12.2.3 (b), as so amended, simply states that the congregation shall present to the Secretary of the Synod “a proper credentials form provided by the Secretary.” It does not specify how this
form is to be distributed. It could be a paper form mailed to each
congregation, or it could be an electronic form accessible on the
Synod website.
The bylaw further specifies that this form must be signed by two
of the congregation’s officers. This could be done via an electronic
signature (which has come to be commonly understood—as in the
case of Missouri contract law, for example, for fifteen years—not
necessarily to require a handwritten mark) before the form is electronically submitted to the Office of the Secretary. If it were not
technically feasible for the two officers to electronically sign the
form, the registration could also be submitted electronically, with a
printed copy of the registration form, bearing the appropriate signatures, sent to the Office of the Secretary prior to the deadline.
Thus, the wording of Bylaw 3.12.2.3 (b) allows the Secretary of
the Synod to use a “secure and verifiable method” for the registration of the voting delegates of each congregation or parish to vote
for the President of the Synod so long as it involves the collection
by some means of the required “signatures” (i.e., verifiable attestations, by some commonly understood means of physical or electronic signature) of two congregational officers.

District Conventions, Circuit and Advisory Meetings, and Coronavirus Contingencies (20-2938)
Minutes of June 16, 2020
The Secretary of the Synod, responding to a number of inquiries
from district presidents and secretaries inspired by the COVID-19
pandemic and associated impediments to large physical gatherings,
potentially extending to or recurring over the next months or years,
requested the following guidance from the commission:
Question 1:

In the event that circuit forums, necessary to elect
circuit visitors and to select Synod convention representation, or meetings of commissioned ministers
and certain ordained ministers to select advisory
delegates cannot meet physically, how can their
business be conducted?

The Synod’s Bylaws have been specifically amended in recent
years to allow the (at that time, new) possibility of conducting these
specific meetings electronically or “virtually.”
The forum of a circuit may meet electronically (Bylaws 3.1.2.1 [a]
and 5.2.2 [a]) and, in the context of a meeting, physical or virtual,
vote electronically (Bylaw 3.1.2.1 [b] and 5.2.2 [c]). The holding
of such a “virtual” meeting presumes that congregations are able
properly to designate representation, that someone in the circuit
has the wherewithal to facilitate a proper electronic meeting and a
means of voting that satisfies the stated requirements, and that the
congregational representatives have fair and reasonable opportunity to attend by the means utilized. Attention should be given by
the circuit visitor, who is responsible to convene the meeting, to