Tag Archives: Michael Thompson

More vote counting errors at General Synod

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It has now emerged that Bishop Mark MacDonald was registered as a non-voting attendee so none of his votes counted during the synod. Yes, the clowns really are running the synod circus.

I know whether the marriage canon vote passed or not doesn’t really make much difference, since liberal bishops are determined to plough ahead no matter what anyone votes, says or does, but surely this latest revelation makes a mockery of the whole process and, since this could be the tip of a very ugly iceberg, invalidates every decision that was made.

Laughably, some from the ACoC turned up at the El Salvador presidential elections in 2014 to make sure everything was above-board. It would be only fair, I think, to invite Salvador Sánchez Cerén, El Salvador’s president, to return the favour and scrutinise the results of the 2019 synod.

From, here:

The National Indigenous Anglican Bishop erroneously listed as non-voting at the General Synod 2016

In the process of reviewing the list of those voting at the General Synod, it has come to my attention that, in addition to myself and the chancellor, one other voting member was wrongly listed as non-voting in the spreadsheet provided to Data-on-the-Spot. The National Indigenous Anglican Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald, was erroneously listed as non-voting and I only discovered this error a number of days after the end of synod. As a result of this error, none of Bishop Mark’s votes during the synod was recorded electronically.

What we did know during the synod was that Bishop MacDonald approached the head-table following the release of voting information for the motion to revise the Marriage Canon. At this time, he informed the primate that he had voted “no”.

If Bishop Mark’s vote were to have been be registered, it would not have changed the outcome of the motion. It would have increased the number of opposed in the order of bishops from 12 to 13 total (one-third of bishops present and voting). The number of bishops in favour would still have met the legislative threshold of two-thirds.

I have spoken with and apologized personally to Bishop MacDonald, and he has been gracious and understanding. We are all deeply grateful to Bishop Mark, and to all those with whom he works, for the emerging clarity in the Indigenous Spiritual Ministry of the Anglican Church of Canada.

I will seek the advice of the Chancellor of General Synod, and present a full report of all voting issues and recommendations of any possible mitigation, to the Council of General Synod at its first meeting this fall.

The integrity of voting at General Synod has come perilously close to breaking. I am grateful to all who have helped us understand where and how that integrity was put at risk. With that information, we can both correct mistakes and, for future General Synods, learn how errors can be avoided.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Thompson, General Secretary

Why are there no calls for Michael Thompson’s resignation?

General Secretary, Michael Thompson changes his story

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Yesterday, Michael Thompson issued a statement explaining what caused the chaos surrounding the marriage canon vote. I wrote an article casting doubt on the plausibility of the explanation; subsequently, David Virtue picked up the story and republished it in VOL.

In yesterday’s statement, Thompson explicitly says the error was caused not by his being categorised as a layperson but by his being placed on the non-voting clergyman list (my emphasis}:

It was at that point that Mr. Copeland, the person supporting the electronic voting, discovered that it was in fact my own vote as General Secretary that had been overlooked in the electronic count. Initially, we thought that it had been miscoded as a lay vote, rather than as a clergy vote. We have since been provided, by Mr. Copeland, the list from which the electronic voting was coded, a list prepared by my office. That list described the General Secretary as “clergy, non-voting”. Data-on-the-spot simply coded the information that my office gave them.

Now, he is claiming the opposite: that, although his office placed him in the non-voting column on a spreadsheet, before synod started, Data on the Spot did not “simply code[d] the information that my office gave them”. The contention now is that Thompson was entered as a voting lay member manually by Data on the Spot’s J.P. Copeland. Copeland says he has no record of who requested the manual change or how it was entered incorrectly.

That invites the questions:

  • Who spotted the initial error?
  • Who created the second error?
  • Who requested the change?
  • Was it the second JFK gunman? Elvis?
  • I know it’s Anglican, but are we really being asked to believe that so much incompetence is concentrated into one small office?

As much as I dislike conspiracy theories, I cannot help being just as suspicious now as I was before the second explanation emerged.

From here (my emphasis):

The error, according to Thompson,  originated with an Excel spreadsheet compiled by his office, which listed him and General Synod Chancellor David Jones as being non-voting members of General Synod. The spreadsheet had listed Thompson as “clergy, non-voting.” According to the Constitution of General Synod, both the general secretary and the chancellor have full voting privileges.

“This was an error that took place in my office,” Thompson said in an interview with the Anglican Journal. “It is not an error that was caused by the electronic voting. It is a mistake that we made…[Data-on-the Spot] simply took the information that we gave them and accurately coded it into their electronic system.”

Thompson had previously issued an apology on the floor of General Synod in which he noted that the “good order of General Synod is my responsibility as general secretary…[and] I want to apologize to the General Synod for the confusion that has been caused.”

The issue of Jones’s and Thompson’s voting privileges was brought to light the day before synod began, said J.P. Copeland, integration specialist for Data-on-the-Spot (DOTS), the electronic voting services provider contracted by General Synod to manage the voting by clickers. When Thompson was manually added to the list of voting members, however, he was wrongly coded as a layperson, instead of as a member of the Order of Clergy—a fact that was discovered only after a printed list of how General Synod members had voted was examined.

“It was literally like a hand addition that was communicated to me,” Copeland told the Anglican Journal, speaking of the request to have Thompson added to the voting list. “I don’t have a record of where it came from, who told me what, or whether I heard improperly or whether I read it improperly.”

Putting something new in the Anglican Church of Canada

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The Anglican Church of Canada has a $600,000 deficit, churches are closing, buildings are being sold, and employees are being laid-off. Even the Anglican Book Centre is no more.

All this leads the ACoC’s general secretary, Michael Thompson to muse that “God is putting something new in the church.” Yes, he is: judgement.

Michael Thompson turned up at St. Hilda’s one Sunday a number of years ago; he was supposed to dissuade us from fleeing the Diocese of Niagara. He wasn’t entirely successful and, although I thought he was a nice enough well-intentioned fellow, he flatly admitted he didn’t quite know what he believed and he envied us our “certainty”.

To put it another way: he is an amiable but clueless cove; that’s how he ended up as general secretary to the ACoC.

From here:

Amid the fiscal challenges facing General Synod, Archdeacon Michael Thompson urged Anglicans “to be patient and kind with ourselves in this time of transition and transformation.”

“God is putting something new in the church,” Thompson told the Council of General Synod at its meeting Nov. 15 to 18.

Reflecting on his first year as general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, Thompson noted the “change in ecosystem of the way the church lives.” He likened it to the trail that he and his wife hike near Lake Superior, where land burnt by a forest fire is now home to healthy blueberry bushes. Could the church adapt to a similar challenge? he wondered. “We don’t have trees anymore, so God doesn’t expect us to be in the lumber business,” he said. “Can we figure out what to do with the blueberries?”

The national church is “being called by God into a bunch of new futures, not just one,” said Thompson, adding the goal is to discover what ministries it is being called to develop.