Re: [Fsfe-uk] Constitution - Voting

[Alistair Davidson]

At 05:50 PM 2/4/02 +0000, John Seago wrote:
> I  used to sit on the council of a national voluntary membership
> organisation. whilst it was unincorporated the rules used to specify both
> a finite number for a quorum at AGM's, and a percentage, I can't remember
> how it was worded, but it should not be beyond those on this list to come
> up with a formula.
>
> This also has a bearing on the likelihood of any members voting, the same
> body used postal voting on prepaid forms for Elections,I don't know what
> the figures are now, but in the past they very rarely exceeded 1.5 > 2%.
> Trade Unions use a similar means and I believe they have a higher rate of
> return but I wouldn't hold out great hopes for either attendance or
> participation, so I would recommend setting figures on the very low side.
> Arguments that this disenfranchises non attendees/voters don't hold up as
> all get equal opportunity to participate.

The only real reason for quorum in the first place is that the quorum 
defines the minimum size of any conspiracy to alter the rules of the 
organisation. I don't think anyone will seriously complain about being 
disenfranchised because of a low quorum unless a quorum-sized conspiracy 
somehow emerges. I doubt it'll happen, if AFFS is reasonably large.

On a side-note, I just found out that a man from the FSF will be speaking 
at Strathclyde University on Thursday. Odd that it was announced to Glasgow 
University's computer department but not on the FSF-UK list :)


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