Funny, secret ballots are actually meant to discourage cabalism, voting for favors and voter intimidation. But yeah, with both lack of turnout and lack of information on candidates they do tend to make things easy to manipulate. I really don't think that going to an open ballot is right though because the problems can better be solved elsewhere and once they are it will provide a valuable safeguard to maintain secret ballots. The nomination process might be one area we can counter the problem. Nominations can be public and with some degree of support needed to stand for election the names of editors endorsing a candidate can be very telling as to what their interests are. Sent from my mobile device. On Mar 20, 2011 12:16 PM, "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: