On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Stephanie Daugherty
<sdaugherty(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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.
I believe that we did this in... 2007, I think? (with open
endorsements). Anyway, it seemed to lead to cabal-ism and so was
dropped.
Yes, we should have open nominations! Of course, then, people have to
agree to run.... :P
I don't know how we can make the candidates more visible. But if there
are questions about the role of the Board, why it's important, what
qualities make for a good board member, etc. that are keeping people
from voting, please say so. Maybe we can write up some more helpful
documentation from the Board side.
-- Phoebe