On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> The ballot did indeed contain the full "new" SC, but it did not
> contain the text of the old SC (for comparison), nor did it contain
> a diff. On top of that, it made a judgement about what type of
> changes were being made (that they were editorial), a judgement that
> seems to have led some people to not investigate what was being
> voted upon ("oh, it's editorial, it won't be important then").
It is rare in any case for a ballot to contain a diff between laws, or
the old version of the law. You could just as easily claim that the
ballot did not contain a dictionary definition of all of the words
present in the SC, or that it didn't contain the Constitution which
indicates how the RM's decisions are constrained.
Furthermore, a ballot necessarily includes some sort of judgement
about what a particular law is going to do. The Secretary has
typically exercised his office in as unbiased a fashion as
possible. However, this sort of issue with the ballot needs to be
pointed out at the instant in which it is seen. [If you didn't see it
yourself, do you expect the Secretary to catch it either?]
Hopefully this thread which doesn't seem to die will finally hammer it
into people that having the ability to vote in a Debian election means
that they need to spend some time on their own to review the related
-vote threads, examine the changes that are being made, and think for
a while about what the options that they are voting on are going to
do.
Blindly exercising your franchise is often worse than not exercising
it at all.
Remember, you're not only voting on behalf of yourself, you're also
voting on behalf of those who cannot vote, Debian's users, even
myself.
Don Armstrong
--
Grimble left his mother in the food store and went to the launderette
and watched the clothes go round. It was a bit like colour television
only with less plot.
-- Clement Freud _Grimble_
http://www.donarmstrong.com
http://rzlab.ucr.edu
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature