Re: Social Committee proposal text (diff)

[Josip Rodin <joy@entuzijast.net>]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2007 at 11:17:52AM +0100, Alexander Schmehl wrote:
> > > > +  <li>The next two weeks are the polling period during which
> > > > +  Developers may cast their votes.  Votes in social committee elections
> > > > +  are made public after the election is finished.</li>
> > > And why shall votes become public?  What's voting about, if not done in
> > > secret?
> > The secrecy is not the point - the point is that we make a cross-section of
> > society, a sample of people who are at least vaguely representative.
> 
> And how will a public election help us having at least vaguely
> representative?

I assume that the emphasis was on *public* election, not on public *election*.

Having a record of who voted for whom is a good default. Since we don't have
any typical real-world election abuses in Debian (e.g. intimidation or
harming of people who voted for someone you don't like), I see no serious
negative consequences to publishing the votes.

The voters can compare notes about who they voted, the candidates can see
who voted for them and who voted for someone else, and all can learn from
the process. In the real-world, this might lead to a surge in populism -
candidates would start appealing to the largest demographics in an effort to
garner more votes; but here, the effect of that would easily be diminished
as soon as people saw through it and started ranking such candidates down;
the election method doesn't give much hope to candidates who are intensely
disliked as well as intensely liked.

We also don't have trivial mass-communication problems as the real world,
and instead have numerous forums and ways of normal voters to communicate
their thoughts with hundreds of others, so opinions are shared much more
easily and you don't get stuck without a relevant information just because
the editor at the TV station didn't think it was cool enough to report.

Maybe there's something that I didn't notice - please do share your
thoughts.

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.