[HCoop-Discuss] silent majority

[Adam Megacz]

I'm not in favor of changing the election system, but I do agree a lot
with this one statement:

Michael Potter <mpotter at hcoop.net> writes:
> There are at least two major 'parties' here: a small group of
> experienced people who have some preferences and a large, silent
> majority who will apparently eat whatever they're served.

It's not healthy for a democracy to have so many voters for whom the
choice of candidate really makes little practical difference -- I
mean, I find it hard to imagine any election outcome that would lead
to mail and web services not working, which is all that the silent
majority really cares about.

I'm not too concerned about this seeing as I'm not running and I'm
pretty sure that at least four of the board seats are going to get
filled with the right people this time around.  But in the long run I
think the responsiveness of the board is likely to suffer.

A somewhat related problem is the kind of politicking encouraged by
the silent-majority situation.  You wind up in a situation where it
makes a lot of sense to express support for popular-but-impractical
ideas as long as you know they're unlikely to actually be implemented.
Or to express support for political issues that arguably have nothing
to do with internet hosting :) But hey, I've seen much uglier politics
than this in other organizations, so I shouldn't complain!  This is
pretty mild stuff.

  - a