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Re: [atlarge-discuss] Election Preparation



At 20:11 -0700 2003/04/16, Sotiris Sotiropoulos wrote:
>Such "people" have no business among us then, and I bet most
>of them are phonies anyway, or at best proxy votes for the
>Benedict Arnolds among us.

I don't think I can agree with that. Undoubtedly, some of the
names of the silent ones *could be* phonies but we have no
reason to assume most of them are - plenty of people who
haven't posted in either the mailing list or the forums are
a) upset at ICANN's abolition of the "At Large" constituency
and
b) likely to have found one or the other of the two Web sites
in the course of looking for news, and to have thought it a
good idea to sign up in case we manage to get this thing
off the ground.

Since I believe in "innocent until proven guilty", I can't
just assume 800+ people are phonies or "traitors to the cause"
just because I don't know them. I do know I've had off-list
messages from some of the silent subscribers to this list
and could vouch for several of them being real and decent
human beings based on our correspondence, even if they have
chosen not to join the free-for-all or publish their
e-mail addresses to the whole world.

>I'll say it again, democracy is participatory.  If they don't
>participate, how do we know they exist, or that they're not
>simply proxies?

I also believe wholeheartedly that democracy *should be*
participatory, but that's not the kind of democracy most
of our democratic governments allow these days and I suspect
only people involved in political or social activism are
accustomed to playing an active role.

I think we do need much more participation in this group if it
is to succeed, but first we need to create a more hospitable
environment: insulting people for their beliefs, suggesting that
holding ballots to decide policies is too much trouble, and
substituting unilateral decision-making for consultative
processes is not the way to achieve it.

BUT, that being said, when we go to vote for our various
representatives in our governments, people don't just assume
we're fraudulent or bought-off voters just because we've
spent our time minding our own business instead of mouthing
off in public or via the Internet. If we're registered
voters, we have the right to vote no matter what anyone
may think we are voting for.

The onus is on us as a group to develop a voter registration
(membership) process which includes some form of identity
confirmation if we believe that those on the existing list
may not be real people. If I remember correctly, Sotiris,
you were very concerned about this earlier on and volunteered
to work on a method for us. Did anything come of it? If not,
perhaps you have some ideas about how it could be done ...
preferably without just expelling everyone who is not known
personally in "meatspace" by other members and without a
labour-intensive or costly kind of identity-checking.

Meanwhile, there is really nothing one can *legitimately* do
to disenfranchise people because they may side with somebody
one disagrees with, unless you're going to chuck democracy out
the window entirely. Given the nature of our group and its
raison d'être, anyone who is a live human Internet user
should have the right to join and the right to vote.

>No Judyth, I think Joop's proposal is quite sound.  I, for one,
>prefer the forum for these purposes... so much more convenient
>than downloading the oftentimes huge volume of email from this
>list (along with the spam that inevitably sneaks in too).  In
>fact, I would say that if we want to be more efficient and
>low-bandwidth friendly, we stick to the online forum entirely
>for these purposes.

We may disagree to some extent about this but I have no
intention of forcing others to share my perspective on this.
If the majority of members want Joop's site to be used
exclusively, that's what the group will do and that's fine
with me -- that's how democracy works. On the other hand,
I don't think it's democratic to make the decision without
letting *everyone* vote on it. There are a small number on
this list who want things Web-based and another small number
concerned that this will prevent some members from voting,
so (to me, at least) it makes sense to hold that vote by
e-mail as part of the election ballot and then do whatever
the majority says it wants.

>P.S.  Judyth, some of us are still waiting for your "proposal"
>for a voting mechanism, remember?  :-)

Are you? I've been posting in some detail how I think an
e-mail ballot can be conducted to minimize the chances of
people voting in other people's names or tampering with
either the ballots or the counts. Had you missed those
messages?

Or perhaps you were looking for an automated, Web-based process?
If so, I'm sorry but that's not something I could do (since
I'm not a programmer) or would do -- since every real-world
democratic voting system I know of depends on several humans
scrutinizing each ballot as it goes into the box and as it is
being counted, to ensure against tampering and leave no
doubts open about ballot-box stuffing or other nefarious
practices.

Anyway, at this point the question is academic since Bruce,
Jefsey and Eric are in charge of conducting the upcoming
vote and have already seen my thoughts on the subject.
Once we have elected a new Panel, I would hope that they'd
make sure the relative merits of the various systems
proposed were discussed and let the members choose what
they think best to be included in the bylaws for the group.

I confess I'm astonished at the degree of mistrust
expressed by some members -- I've been part of other groups
which had more reason to expect infiltration by "enemy agents"
or chicanery at the polls. But, given that this is the climate
in which we must vote now, I think the best Web-based solution
would be the one being discussed by Abel, Jefsey and Stephen
-- where both the programming and the tabulated results
were posted openly for public scrutiny. (I still hope, though,
that the results posted would be identified by number or
ballot-specific password rather than by name and e-mail
address.) I'm not competent to contribute to programming
but I think I and most other members could read the program
well enough to spot code that said "count each vote for X
five times" or something. Anyway, suffice it to say that
this sort of method would probably generate less suspicion
than a non-open-source method, and that having a number of
people of different political orientations involved in the
election process is the best available assurance that
legitimate ballots won't be discarded and illegitimate ones
won't be added before the count.

HTH,

Judyth





##########################################################
Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
##########################################################
"A word to the wise is sufficient. For others, use more."
"Un mot suffit aux sages; pour les autres, il en faut plus."
##########################################################



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