Proposed Change to ACM SIGGRAPH Bylaws

The ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee has proposed a change to the ACM SIGGRAPH bylaws, which has been approved by the ACM SIG Governing Board Executive Committee. The change pertains to article 9.3 of the bylaws.

Current article 9.3

9.3 Election. The election will be conducted among eligible voters by ACM Headquarters by June 1, following the election procedures of the ACM, unless different procedures have been approved by the SIG Governing Board.

New article 9.3

9.3 Election. The election will be conducted among eligible voters by ACM Headquarters by August 15, following the election procedures of the ACM, unless different procedures have been approved by the SIG Governing Board.

With this change, the newly elected directors would take office Sept 1 instead of July 1.

Rationale

The rationale behind the change is to increase member participation in the election process. A large percentage of ACM SIGGRAPH membership attends the annual SIGGRAPH conference, so the hope is for the conference to serve as a platform for publicizing the election and encouraging ACM SIGGRAPH members to vote.

Under recently approved procedural changes by the SGB, certain minor changes in bylaws can be approved by the SGB EC and sent on to the ACM Executive committee for approval without a formal vote of the membership. However, ACM SIGGRAPH members have 30 days to register any objections. If at least 3% of ACM SIGGRAPH members object, then the bylaws change must be voted on by the entire membership.

Any challenges may be sent to Donna Cappo, Director of SIG Services at: cappo@hq.acm.org and must be received by March 10, 2016 at 5:00pm EST.

Current SIGGRAPH bylaws can be viewed at https://www.siggraph.org/sites/default/files/ACM-SIGGRAPH-Bylaws.pdf