[ga] Voters interest and Defining a voter's roll

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz>]

Dear GA list members,

Whenever the DNSO GA has been polled as a body, there have been allegations
of unrepresentativity  of some sort.

The physical meetings have always had the problem that they are mostly a
selection of people  able to attend the meetings with the help of an
expense account.

Here we have a virtual GA on-line with a few hundred subscribers, that ,
according to Roberto and Harald, does not  include all the former physical
participants that it should include.

Yet, the participation barrier here is not money, but only a tolerance for
some noise in one's mailbox. Lurkers don't even risk to be personally
abused. <g> 

Now when we are talking about list rules, it is clear that those not
subscribed  to the list have no need and no interest to vote on list-rule
issues.

In other words for list issues the total voter's roll is nothing more than
the subscriber list at any given time.
It is important to have a defined roll, so that this roll can be frozen
prior to the announcement of a vote.

May I propose that those interested in voting enroll themselves volutarily
on the dnso website, or via an email to a trusted listmember willing to
volunteer building this roll?

Then both issues of identity and the measure of interest in voting can be
addressed. 

This is better than judging voters' interest from members participation in
a poll from which they may have consciously wished to abstain.



--Joop Teernstra LL.M.--  , founder  of
the Cyberspace Association,
the constituency for Individual Domain Name Owners
http://www.idno.org  (or direct:) 
http://www.democracy.org.nz/idno/