On Dec 1, 2011, at 8:47 AM, Ross Singer wrote: > As unwilling commissioner of elections, I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I say, > to hear of improprieties with the voting process.
It could be worse ... I'm an unwilling elected official. (and the re-election for my third term is next month ... anyone want to move to Upper Marlboro, MD, so they can run against me? I think you still have about a week to make the 30 day residency deadline) (maybe 'unwilling' is the wrong word, before this shows up in the local newspaper ... I'll do it, but I think someone with more free time to commit might be able to do a better job) > That said, I'm not shocked (and we've seen it before). > > I am absolutely opposed to: > > 1) Setting weights on voting. 0 is just as valid a vote as 3. > 2) Publicly shaming the offenders in Code4Lib. If you run across > impropriety in a forum, make a friendly, yet firm, reminder that > ballot stuffing is unethical, undemocratic and tears at the fabric > that is Code4Lib. Sometimes it just takes a simple reminder for > people to realize what they're doing is wrong (it certainly works for > me). > 3) Selection committees. We are, as Dre points out, > anarcho-democratic as our core. anarcho-bureaucratic just sounds > silly. It'd be (anarcho-)?republican, as you'd have a smaller body that's appointed or elected to make the decisions. > This current situation is largely our doing. We even publicly said > that "getting your proposal voted in is the backdoor into the > conference". The first allotment of spaces sold out in an hour. This > is, literally, the only way that a person that was not able to > register and is buried on the wait list is going to get in. And we've > basically told them that. Perhaps if registration were done after the talk selection, this wouldn't be a problem? Or some sort of lottery, rather than first-come-first served? ... and the real way to ensure a slot is to help with the conference planning ... if you've agreed to man the table where people get their badges, they normally let you come. > One thing I would be open to is to put a disclaimer splash page before > any ballot (only to be seen the first time a person votes) briefly > explaining how the ballot works and to mention that ballot stuffing is > "unethical, undemocratic and tears at the fabric that is Code4Lib" or > some such. I would welcome contributions to the wording. > > What would people think about that? I'd like to know if this is even a problem -- is there some way to tell if we have people who only voted for one paper? (although, just putting that as a restriction just makes 'em likely to vote for a few random ones, which really does taint the whole process) -Joe
