My understanding of the consensus from the previous meetings was that electronic voting was felt to be not yet widely deployable technology. But we may want to reconcider that with experiences from the ICANN at large election and perhaps from ARINs and APNICs plans.
I would actually argue that electronic voting is preferred because it will allow people unable to participate in RIPE meetings to vote as well.
I agree with you but the trouble we ran into when discussiong this at a previous meeting was that it is easy to define the electorate (who gets to vote) if we do the voting at a meeting; then we have an open meeting for anyone to participate, and thoose present may vote (with the restrictions set forth in bylaws and MoUs preventing RIPE NCC staff to do so.) If we should go for electronic voting, we could either stay OPEN and allow anyone on the internet (or on the internet in the RIPE region ( or on the internet with interests in the RIPE region)) to vote. Or we may want to limit that to the "RIPE membership" which is and always has been non existent. (Not to be confused with the RIPE NCC Association membership) Now theese difficulties needs to be taken into account, just as your pont that electronic voting would allow thoose not able to get to the RIPE meeting to participate. -hph