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Grex > Coop9 > #7: Members with more than one vote |  |
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srw
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Members with more than one vote
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Oct 20 04:14 UTC 1996 |
I would like to discuss the question of whether individual members
should be limited to one vote in Grex elections. It is my opinion that a
single individual should not be able to vote more than once, even if
that person buys two memberships. In fact I think it should not be
possible for an individual to have two memberships. This may be spelled
out by either State Law, or our bylaws, but I am not sure. To me this is
a basic principle (1 person-1 vote) that I believe Grex adheres to, but
I am not sure of the details.
A related question is whether an organization can have a membership in
Grex, or only individuals. I do not remember us ever establishing a
policy on this question, but we may have done so. I am hoping that
someone can shed light on this. I do not believe we have a second type
of membership for organizations. I think this means that organizations
cannot really become members, only individuals, but again I do not know
if this is established.
These two issues could be related. If a person had an individual
membership, but also exerted some control over an organization that was
also a member of Grex, then if both could vote, this person would have
more control over Grex's policies and directors than anyone else on
Grex. This would violate the 1 person-1 vote principle, that I believe
Grex adheres to.
Perhaps this is all a non-issue, but I need to understand why.
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| 186 responses total. |
tsty
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response 1 of 186:
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Oct 20 06:17 UTC 1996 |
slate? individual memership and elected representative of an organization
which also has a membership?
businesses are consdiered "persons" for all intents and purposes.
maybe a slate of two. the business would tell their representative how
to vote for the business/organization, and that same individual would,
with a personal membership, vote independently. i cna see this if we
had organizational/business memberships.
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chelsea
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response 2 of 186:
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Oct 20 15:05 UTC 1996 |
I'm fond of the one vote per member and one member per
person philosophy. Very fair to all. Money shouldn't
buy additional votes in a co-operatively run organization.
I'd also like to see Grex be helpful to other organizations
but without bending or altering our basic rules of governance.
So other groups would be encouraged to use Grex but not with
special privileges. If groups had voting rights there would
most certainly be cases where a proxy would be given to
the person most in-touch with the organization and this person
could or would be voting as an individual member. We'd
be allowing multiple votes by one person. Bad policy. Bad
precedent.
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janc
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response 3 of 186:
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Oct 20 17:16 UTC 1996 |
I think if we formalized some "benefactor" status, which confers no real
benefits except public recognition of your support, that would be a better
way for corporations to support us.
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dang
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response 4 of 186:
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Oct 20 22:29 UTC 1996 |
Of course, someone in a group could get a membership, and then decide how it
voted in some way as a group, and we'd never know. Big deal. However, we'd
need some one person who vouched for the membership.
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kami
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response 5 of 186:
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Oct 21 03:21 UTC 1996 |
This issue doesn't particularly upset my reality, but two data points:
I read two accounts on Grex. One is my personal account, and in it I vote
as one person. I *tend* to be the person who reads to Convocat account,
but it *belongs* to an organization, to the Magical Education Council of
Ann Arbor, so in any voting decision which affects that organization, I would
have to get the opinion of the board before registering a vote. Effectively,
that represents one vote for about 1/2 a dozen people then. Not a big deal.
Secondly, another organization to which I belong does voting by seniority;
for each year that you are a member you gain another vote, giving the more
experienced people more weight. I'm not suggesting that Grex adopt that
policy, it could be an accounting nightmare, but there's a different model
than one-person-one-vote, which is accounted fair.
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rcurl
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response 6 of 186:
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Oct 21 06:49 UTC 1996 |
Many organizations have a class of "Institutional members", or something like
that, usually with higher dues than for individuals, because organizations
can afford to support the organization at a higher level. Many, if not
most, such institutional members can also vote (one vote). In the cases
I know personally about, the instituional board discuss and cast their ballots
at a board meeting. I suppose an individual member with some "pull" in
the other organizations, has in effect (say) 1.15 votes, but this is less of
a problem than the benefits of the closer ties with organizations that may
be helpful in other ways.
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mdw
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response 7 of 186:
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Oct 22 01:00 UTC 1996 |
I believe that for many organizations, that would work more like 2 votes
for the person - perhaps more if someone clever volunteers to be the
"grex coordinator" for a number of organizations.
I also beleive that's unfair, and contrary to grex's purpose. Grex
should be interested first in promoting access for *individuals*, not
*organizations*. For almost any organization, there are plenty of
better ways for them to organize web pages, mailing lists, or other
activities that organization might wish to pursue. Those activities
would come at the expense of individuals users if done here. Other
organizations, such as HVNC, branch, or any commercial ISP, are a much
better fit for most such organizations.
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ryan1
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response 8 of 186:
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Oct 22 01:36 UTC 1996 |
I agree with Steve Weiss. I do not think that an individual should have
more than one vote in elections. This would allow people to "buy" votes
which really isn't much of an "election". On the other hand, I think
that a person should be able to have more than one "member" account(s)
with internet access, but without these extra accounts having the voting
privileges.
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albaugh
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response 9 of 186:
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Oct 22 16:07 UTC 1996 |
If grex does indeed allow/accept "institutional" memberships, then such
institutions should be required to assign exactly one human for voting
purposes (who could be checked against other memberships to prevent more than
one vote per human), or waive their rights to vote.
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dang
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response 10 of 186:
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Oct 22 17:40 UTC 1996 |
Which is how it works now.
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davel
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response 11 of 186:
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Oct 22 19:23 UTC 1996 |
In a way, yes ... but in fact we have only individual memberships. If someone
wants to make an account available to other people, it would be hard to stop
those people from voting ... with a "whoever votes last gets to vote" effect
for that one account's vote. That's quite different from an institutional
membership, from Grex's point of view; from the institution's POV maybe not.
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srw
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response 12 of 186:
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Oct 23 07:33 UTC 1996 |
Hmm. I am very pleased that Kami and convocat are both
members, supporting Grex. We do very much need all the
support we can get. I also have no quarrel with Kami. But
am I the only one who is worried about this ? Couldn't
someone buy votes by forming a number of organizations
he/she controlled and enrolling them all as members of
grex? I am certain Kami did not do this, btw.
I don't have any knowledge of how the M.E.C. determines
how to vote here. I accept Kami's word that she doesn't
singlehandedly determine the vote, but I think she is
admitting that she can play a small role (1 of 6) in the
organization's vote. I find this troubling, as she already
controls a whole vote. How small a control of the
organization's vote is small enough that we just say "big
deal"?
Jan (resp:3) ^Ksuggested that organizations shouldn't be
granted votes. I think this is the simplest solution. I
agree.
Marcus(resp:7) suggested that HVCN or an ISP would better
suit an organization's need. Well I suppose with my HVCN
hat on I should be happy, but I'm not. I think Grex can
and should work with organizations (not just individuals)
like MNAC and M.E.C.. If these organizations wanted
votes, though, I would suggest that they get their
individuals to join.
Dang (resp:9-10) I don't think it works that way now at
all. See kami/convocat.
^K^K
^K^K^K^K^K
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dang
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response 13 of 186:
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Oct 23 17:02 UTC 1996 |
Right, but someone had to give a name and address for the convocat membership,
and that person could not then have an individual membership. They
essentially donated their individual membership on grex to the convocat group.
If they don't control the vote for that membership, that's their choice. We
have no control over who votes on a given membership, just who "vouches" for
it.
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scg
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response 14 of 186:
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Oct 23 18:22 UTC 1996 |
I agree with srw that there is a problem if people can have multiple
memberships. I haven't figured out how I feel about organizational
memberships with voting rights yet.
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pfv
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response 15 of 186:
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Oct 23 18:38 UTC 1996 |
What's to feel? They have membership and they vote <shrug>
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aruba
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response 16 of 186:
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Oct 23 20:05 UTC 1996 |
Re #13: Dan, you are mistaken if you think we don't allow two memberships to
have the same address/validation information at present. We currently have
no such guideline, that I know of. (And I *know* I haven't enforced such
a rule in accepting money.)
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scg
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response 17 of 186:
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Oct 23 22:06 UTC 1996 |
We've been saying that we have such a policy for as long as I've been around
here. Maybe we weren't enforcing it.
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robh
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response 18 of 186:
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Oct 23 22:44 UTC 1996 |
So we can't allow both chelsea and remmers to be members, because
they live at the same address?
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scg
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response 19 of 186:
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Oct 24 04:39 UTC 1996 |
Mark was saying "address/validation information," and I think of a name as
part of that information. Maybe I misunderstood Mark.
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dang
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response 20 of 186:
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Oct 24 12:41 UTC 1996 |
Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Name is important. (Granted, you can
supposedly sign up a membership as your kid or your brother, or something,
but that's not possible to catch either.)
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aruba
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response 21 of 186:
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Oct 25 11:07 UTC 1996 |
Neither danr nor I have enforced that policy. Who is the "We" you are
referring to in #17, Steve? And if we did try to enforce such a policy,
and, say, both memberships are paid with one check, how do we really know
they're not controlled by the same person? We have had several instances
of that case. Since a check is the most common form of vaidation information
we use, as you might expect we have had cases in which the validation
information is identical for two different memberships.
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scg
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response 22 of 186:
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Oct 25 15:56 UTC 1996 |
We, as in Grex or at least the Grex Board, have been saying for years
that there could only be one membership per person, and that we had to
have ID from that person, or ID from their parent was acceptable if they
were a minor. That's been the stated policy, and I think we've even had
a board vote on it. Have the stated policy and what was actually being
done had any relation to eachother?
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kerouac
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response 23 of 186:
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Oct 25 16:03 UTC 1996 |
#22...then a parent with four kids, could buy five memberships
(four in his kids names and one in his) and thus get five votes
with one ID. In fact, he could just *claim* to have four kids
when the ids are really his and he just wants the extra votes.
I dont think that policy was well thought through.
One could theoretically buy as many memberships as he wants,
because how does grex know how many children, stepchildren,
.etc one has? You can buy'em all with one ID so what the heck
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rcurl
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response 24 of 186:
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Oct 25 16:55 UTC 1996 |
That's true of *all* voting, in any situation. However, I guess you don't have
kids, since you think their votes can be controlled. Of course, in some
voting, there are age limits. Say, a minimum age of 5, for voting?
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