Re: [ga] Quorum and Definition

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>]

--On 25. juni 2001 18:17 -0400 Sotiris Sotiropoulos 
<sotiris@hermesnetwork.com> wrote:

> My offlist-reply to Harald's earlier email was a mistake.  I must have hit
> Reply when I meant to hit Reply All.  My apologies to Harald.  But, I
> think harald's reply speaks to an interesting issue.  The low
> participation rate of the GA membership in votes.

When deciding what rules to propose, there were 2 opposing interests 
discussed,
both having to do with the ease of changing the rules:

- avoiding the easy capture of the GA by a small group of activists in
  the face of a large, but less active majority. This argues for a 
relatively
  large "minimum quorum".

- avoiding the paralysis of the GA by a large group of people who have 
registered
  once and then have lost interest and left. This argues for a relatively 
small
  "minimum quorum".

The compromise numbers proposed (20% or 100 votes, whichever is lower) 
seems to have worked reasonably well - we got a quorum on the rule changes 
proposed so far,
even in the face of a large group of disinterested voters.

This note isn't about what's the Right Thing, but tries to explain some of 
the
reasoning that went into the current ruleset.

Things I would consider doing differently:

- Imposing a yearly reregistration on the voting registry, so that the truly
  disinterested voters get removed from the count of registered voters 
after a
  while

- Imposing a minimum quorum rule on general motions as well as on rule 
changes
  (note that experience shows that the minimum quorum needs to be 
surprisingly
  low....)

But detailed discussion of proposals for changes really belong on the 
ga-rules list...

                 Harald

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