Hank, all,
Been a year, but here I go again, beating at this dead horse.
it's still breathing... :-)
If you go thru the effort of doing the proxy "thing", you will find that one cannot submit a scanned proxy form by email, rather one has to use a fax machine or postal mail. In this day and age, this just strikes me as ridiculous.
And it is. Thanks for pointing that out. We're changing this and are about to send out an update.
But now back to e-voting. In the Articles: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/articles-association.html section 17.1: 17.1 In addition to the possibility of the members to physically attend the meeting, the Executive Board may decide to open the possibility for the Members to attend the General Meeting through electronic means at a remote location and to vote through electronic means from a remote location. In addition the Executive Board may decide to open the possibility for the Members to electronically participate in deliberation at the General Meeting. The Executive Board shall regulate the (technical) procedure and the requirements for electronic attendance, voting and/or deliberation. The right to vote through electronic means shall only apply to Executive Board member elections.
1) Electronic voting for just executive board members is ridiculous as well. The more pressing issues are with charging schemes and other issues. Glad to see that this will be slightly changed as follows: http://www.ripe.net/membership/gm/gm-november2010/documents/changes-articles...
Indeed. We introduced e-voting primarily in response to members' comments about the rather arcane election procedure at the time. We've done it now once, and were satisfied that it seemed to work quite well. As you say, we are now preparing the article change that would enable e-voting on other topics as well, without further article change.
But it is limited to what the Executive Board decides should be voted upon. I think whatever is voted upon in person should be allowed to be voted upon electronically w/o the EB having to get involved.
Without trying to speak for the board, this would be the general intention. However, we would like to discuss how the procedures for this would impact the GM.
2) Last time electronic voting was used, one *had* to vote within a 15 minute window of opportunity. If you missed it, then you couldn't vote.
This is actually required by local law, which requires attendees / voters to be able to fully follow the meeting and discussions.
As of today, we have 32 voting members attending out of how many LIRs - 5000?
We have more than 7000 members this year. At the last GM, more than 200 votes where cast. Since we hold GMs during the RIPE Meeting week, attendance has gone up significantly. But yes, participation could be much better. Does that make for democracy? I highly doubt it. Sure it does. All members have the opportunity to vote, if they so wish. Is the current participation as high as we would want it to be? Clearly not. Looking forward to the next GM, eager to see the trend continuing and attendance improving. cheers, Axel