[council] Nominating Committee & at-large

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

I may have not been as clear as I should be in one of my statements  
during today's call, concerning the relationship between a  
nominating committee and an at-large membership, so let me try to  
clarify this a bit more.

1. It is safe to assume that most of the GA's members (certainly  
most of its active ones) would clearly favor direct at-large  
elections over any nominating (or rather: selection) committee  
approach.

2. Since that doesn't seem to be feasible at this point of time,  
reserving a number of board seats for an at-large membership, and  
having the selection committeee fill these seats as a stop-gap  
measure, is certainly preferable over assigning these seats to a  
selection committee for all future, effectively eliminating even the 
notion of an at-large membership.

3. In order to make such an arrangement more than just a  
lip-service, the reservation of board seats for an at-large  
membership would have to have some teeth - for instance, a bylaws  
provision which mandates at-large elections at a well-defined point  
of time in the future, provided certain factual conditions are  
fulfilled.  Bad enough, it seems unlikely to me that the current 
board would even consider such a change.

4. Maybe having some kind of open election for some (or even all?   
;-) members of the selection committee may be the way to go for at  
least some at-large membership representation within the structure  
currently proposed.
	  
-- 
Thomas Roessler                          http://log.does-not-exist.org/