Re: Minutes of the board meeting of April 29, 2019

On Wed, May 22, 2019 at 4:35 AM, Tobias Mueller <[email protected]> 
wrote:
> I guess these plans are news to most members.

I had suggested a similar change a couple years ago. My intention had 
nothing to do with the operations of the board; I just want to make our 
elections more meaningful and competitive. When we have seven 
candidates up for election at the same time, we need to have 
significantly more than seven candidates running for the election to be 
very meaningful. You probably remember that we had an election recently 
(I believe it was 2017) in which there were exactly seven candidates, 
so the vote was not very meaningful. Having an election of, say, 9 
people for 7 positions is not really a contest to see who the community 
wants to elect, it's just a contest to see who won't finish last. 
Reducing the number of open seats should (hopefully) result in 
significantly more-competitive elections simply by reducing the number 
of open seats relative to the number of people running for the seats. 
Having fewer seats open should hopefully also result in less-confusing 
elections, because having an election with significantly more than 
seven candidates is a lot to keep track of for voters.

All board members must still be elected on a regular basis, every two 
years. Two years is pretty frequent. I don't think this undermines the 
sovereignty of the electorate. And we get to replace 3-4 directors per 
year, which is significant. The proposal seems like a good compromise 
between chaos and responsiveness to the electorate.

Michael