[MR] Triton on Laurel's Decision regarding the Queen's Arms Change

[BATCOK at aol.com]

In a message dated 7/7/2003 8:46:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
checkylady at earthlink.net writes:


> Cannot we do a Yahoo polling on this and requesting each person's 
> name/email address? It would be the most expedient way and a large sampling of the 
> kingdom populace, albeit not its entirety... 
> 
> Just a suggestion.
> 
> Mordrea

Unfortunately, the Heraldic Administrative Handbook* Section IV.C.5 is very 
specific in the format of the Polling of Support:

Evidence of Support - Submissions involving the branch name or arms of an 
active branch must include evidence of support for the action on the part of the 
majority of the active members of the branch. <Snip of section dealing with 
branches that lack ruling nobles and groups lower than Kingdom.> If a submission 
would result in the registration or modification of the Branch Name or Branch 
Arms of a kingdom, principality or equivalent branch, support must be 
demonstrated by the results of a poll conducted in the relevant official newsletter 
and certified by the seneschal of the appropriate branch. <Snip of section 
detailing other Branch items.>

The Laurel herald has specified that the Queen's Arms are equivalent in 
status to the arms of the King/dom and require the same treatment to be changed.  
The fact that E-mail addresses/aliases can be created and copied at whim 
prevent them from being used to accurately serve as documentation of a person's 
will.  Hard copy with signatures** are what the Heraldic Process requires.  Speed 
of response is not important to this process (although timeliness is), 
accuracy of response tracking is most important.

Batcok, Triton

* http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/admin.html

** I freely admit that hand signatures can be faked as easily as electronic 
signatures.  However, they are much easier to detect as false than E-mail 
addresses are.