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@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#0...
Best regards,
Axel Pawlik Managing Director RIPE NCC