.avif)
Irrigation management in Spain requires swift decisions in response to drought and new regulations. Digitizing assemblies can help overcome the challenges posed by geographically dispersed landowners and low attendance. Introducing technology through a hybrid model is a solution worth considering.
In this guide, we explain how to modernize participation in irrigation communities by combining in-person and online attendance, ensuring legal validity while overcoming the digital divide often found in rural areas.
The Challenge of Weighted Voting: Automated Calculation
One of the main challenges facing presidents and secretaries is managing weighted voting. In irrigation communities, the rule is not “one member, one vote”; instead, each member’s voting power is proportional to their irrigated land area, shareholding, or water rights.
In in-person assemblies, counting delegated votes by a show of hands is tedious and can lead to human error. Technology solves this problem by uploading the voter register with the exact voting weights for each member. Online voting automates the calculation by identifying each irrigation community member based on their landholding, eliminating the need for manual counting.
Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing a Hybrid General Meeting
The hybrid assembly is the only viable solution to the digital divide affecting older members. The steps to implement it are:
- Update the voter roll: Clean up the voter roll and ensure mobile numbers and email addresses are up to date.
- Amend the bylaws if necessary: Seek assembly approval to adapt the regulations to allow hybrid meetings, then submit them to the relevant River Basin Authority.
- Choose the right software: Opt for a web-based platform that requires no complex installation and is designed to meet regulatory requirements (the eIDAS standard).
- Sit back and relax: On the day of the meeting, the system will combine votes cast in the meeting room with those submitted remotely from members’ homes or farms, all in real time.
Real Benefits for Irrigation Communities
- Significantly higher attendance: Makes it easier for irrigation community members who live far away or cannot leave their work to participate.
- Faster decision-making: Enables all types of proposals to be approved quickly.
- Transparent and error-free: Electronic vote counting reduces suspicions of bias and automatically generates meeting minutes.
Modernizing the way people vote is just as important as modernizing irrigation in agriculture. The hybrid model allows more irrigation community members to participate, saving time and ensuring that every resolution is legally valid.
.avif)
