[members-discuss] Re: [ncc-announce] Voting Options at General Meetings

On Tue, 21 Jul 2009, Axel Pawlik wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> The RIPE NCC Executive Board has been evaluating various options regarding 
> the proposal to change the voting procedure currently used to elect the 
> Executive Board during General Meetings.
>
> Several of these options were presented at the General Meeting in May 2009. 
> Please refer to this presentation for more details:
> http://www.ripe.net/membership/gm/gm-may2009/presentations/
>
> After discussion during this meeting, there was no clear consensus on how to 
> proceed. The minutes of the General Meeting are available at:
> http://www.ripe.net/membership/gm/gm-may2009/minutes.html
>
> The Executive Board concluded that in order to widen participation in 
> elections, it will propose to allow voting by postal ballot for Executive 
> Board elections. This addition to the voting process will not require a major 
> effort or a major investment from the RIPE NCC.

I think that is a poor choice for testing postal ballots.  Due to the low 
interest in whether one person or another gets elected, the number of 
postal ballots submitted will be quite low - and you will therefore draw 
an erroneous conclusion.  Why not have postal voting for the charging 
scheme?  Offer a few alternatives - I bet that would generate much more 
voting interest.

>
> The Executive Board will monitor whether this enhancement leads to increased 
> participation and based on these outcomes will decide on further steps.
>

Sort of like watching the number of boats crossing a river and drawing a 
conclusion that based on the number of boats and commerce between the 2 
shores it doesn't warrant building a bridge on that spot.

-Hank

> Membership discussion of the proposed changes to voting options for General 
> Meetings can take place at <members-discuss at ripe.net>.
>
> For your information, there has already been some discussion on the 
> members-discuss mailing list. The mailing list archive is available at:
> http://www.ripe.net/maillists/ncc-archives/members-discuss/2009/index.html#00064 
>
> Best regards,
>
> Axel Pawlik
> Managing Director
> RIPE NCC
>