Omov

[Bob Armstrong]

This appeared on July 27, after the recent USCF election, by Mig Greengard on his Daily Dirt blog:

" I'm still vaguely horrified that the USCF has a 'one member one vote' system in the first place. A large, largely disinterested base of hobbyists simply aren't going to take the time and effort, even supposing sufficient information about the candidates were easily available. OMOV is also a massive and generally fruitless diversion of time and resources for a small organization. The USCF isn't a co-op. "

Quite a damning assessment of the cherished " One Member, One Vote " system.

Canada has a modified OMOV system, where CFC members in a province, elect their provincial representation governors. From my point of view, this has served Canada fairly well - the problem in my view has been that there are simply too many governors ( one for every 23 adult members ) - but I lost that one at the July AGM, and will move on to the " Governors' Activity Rule ".

Anyone else share Greengard's disdain of OMOV?

Bob

[Kerry Liles]

This appeared on July 27, after the recent USCF election, by Mig Greengard on his Daily Dirt blog:

" I'm still vaguely horrified that the USCF has a 'one member one vote' system in the first place. A large, largely disinterested base of hobbyists simply aren't going to take the time and effort, even supposing sufficient information about the candidates were easily available. OMOV is also a massive and generally fruitless diversion of time and resources for a small organization. The USCF isn't a co-op. "

Quite a damning assessment of the cherished " One Member, One Vote " system.

Canada has a modified OMOV system, where CFC members in a province, elect their provincial representation governors. From my point of view, this has served Canada fairly well - the problem in my view has been that there are simply too many governors ( one for every 23 adult members ) - but I lost that one at the July AGM, and will move on to the " Governors' Activity Rule ".

Anyone else share Greengard's disdain of OMOV?

Bob

The problems I see with OMOV are also exhibited in general elections in Canada where each citizen has a vote:
- there is no distinction between an informed vote and a sheep vote.
- there is no obligation to vote (or better, an obligation to become informed and then vote)

As Mig observed, a number of uninformed people or (worse) people with a specific political agenda can influence the outcome.

I prefer to have a system where there is a buffer between the masses and the voting: a representative system. That system has problems too: does a representative vote his/her conscience or that of the majority of his/her constituents? This is a classic issue.

In situations like the U.S. Congress, where the voting is transparent (usually), constituents can observe which way their representative has voted and act accordingly the next time an election of the representative occurs.

Giving *every* paid up member of the CFC a vote is worse (in my opinion) than having too many representatives and complaining that most of those reps never vote or participate. If you open the voting to every dog and cat, the turnout will be skewed to those who have an agenda or those who are easily influenced (not with money but with rhetoric perhaps) and the apathetic majority will do what they do: nothing.

There are flaws in all the models I know about.

Note the amazingly LOW turnout for the recent USCF Board Member election; despite the importance of that election for the future of the USCF, the turnout was very, very low. I would not expect the CFC voting turnout to be any better.

Perhaps the best chance is to try to have -only- Governors who care and who actually work to improve the CFC. There are too many now and clearly a large number of them cannot be bothered enough to even vote most of the time. I don't know how to ensure you only get Governors who care (reducing the number of positions might eliminate the dead wood, but there is no guarantee it will only eliminate dead wood).

An enlightened dictatorship is the best choice; the problem is finding an enlightened dictator - we have had a number of dictators that clearly weren't too enlightened.