[members-discuss] gm-may2009/presentations/voting-options.pdf

Nigel Titley wrote:
> Bernard Dugas wrote:

>> The original "democracy" was based on random selection in greece : 
>> this was to avoid that economical powers would ridge the election 
>> process through influences...
> 
> It is an intriguing idea. Of course the selection process in ancient 
> Greece was limited to a fairly narrow range of candidates, roughly 10% 
> of the total population (only full citizens, no women or slaves, for 
> example)

This was for all citizen : citizen definition has evolved.

>> The current political election process is no democracy, this is beauty 
>> contest and psychology warfare, where the most you ads and frighten 
>> people, the most you win.
>>
>> I'm not telling that RIPE elections are like that :-) But don't take 
>> current political process as a model...
> 
> I'm glad you aren't comparing the RIPE NCC Board with politicians. I 
> would feel compelled to resign on the spot if you had.

Please don't take anything personal anytime. And specially now i don't 
know anybody there ;-)

> In all seriousness though. If you wish to open a discussion on the 
> election process, then this is the list to do it on. Note that the 
> current board has taken the step of encouraging the NCC to make 
> announcements on this list rather than just making them at general 
> meetings. This is  in order to encourage open debate. I'm pleased to see 
> that this is having some effect.

We may begin by understanding the current situation :

In the last 2 years :

- how many members voted during each GM, physically and by proxy ?

- how many votes from each billing category ?

- how many board members from each category ?

>> I don't know personnally anybody in the current board, how can i 
>> choose and judge their skills ?
> 
> This is a very valid point, but I'm not sure how we can work around it.

For the board election, what i understand now is that the process is 
more "lets do the volunteers".

Adding some randomness in the process would be very simple and would add 
some interest from the base, knowing than anybody can refuse.

But we still have to find a convenient process for voting on technical 
decisions like finance reports or billing scheme.

I would support the idea of using the current need of RIPE to help 
funding an open software initiative, both for ramdom drawings and for 
open voting process through internet.

>> The result is that i have not voted until now, because i don't know 
>> anybody and the cost to go to the GM meeting is too high...
> 
> The proxy voting system allows you to vote remotely, but of course if 
> you don't know us then, as you say, a vote is pointless.

And i don't know which proxy to use...

> Well, I for one have worked for pretty well all sizes of category: 
> national PTT, US corporate, European corporate, Global undersea cable, 
> startup, IXP, small ecommerce. Pretty well the only type of member I 
> haven't worked for is academic. I hope I understand and have sympathy 
> for the problems of members of all types and sizes.

I hope i will discover that also :-)

Best regards,
-- 
  __Bernard DUGAS ______________________________________________________
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