[Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed

[Austin Hair]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Harel Cain <harel.cain at gmail.com> wrote:
> Before we start extending the right to vote to ever wider groups of people,
> we should ask ourselves how much this right is exercised by those already
> entitled to it, and how many of those proposed to be granted the right to
> vote are expected to really make use of it.
>
> The last elections saw a participation of a few thousand of voters, just a
> small proportion of all the people eligible to vote, and I guess these could
> be split roughly into those who really are into foundation-level and
> meta-level issues and those who were (legitimately) recruited from among the
> home projects of the candidates without  too much real interest in the
> elections. Whoever didn't fall into these two categories rarely voted, and I
> anticipate the same will hold true for the new groups you proposed in your
> mail.
>
> The real question we should ask ourselves is how to make these elections
> more relevant and important for those groups of people already entitled to
> take part in them.

I don't think the point here is to increase voter turnout,
though—rather, it's to prevent people who do quite a lot of off-wiki
work to support Wikimedia, people who probably have more interest than
most in the composition of the Board, from being unfairly
disenfranchised as they (okay, we) have been in past elections.

Incidentally, if the requirements are lowered as proposed, I can vote
for the first time in three years! (Assuming I can vote from meta,
that is.)

Austin