[chapter-delegates] Results of the board discussion on membership

[James M Galvin]

Andres,

Thank you for your suggestions.  Here are my comments about each.



--On Monday, March 14, 2005 5:49 PM +0100 Andres Oliva 
<aoliva at isoc-cat.org> wrote:

> To eliminate the "pay for vote" system for the individual membership.

I regret to say that this is not an option.  Individual members have 
always been an important community to ISOC and the Board has made it 
clear that it wants to continue that principle.  This includes making 
individual members eligible to vote in the direct election of Trustees.


> To re-establish the downgraded "associate members" to the "global or
> chapter members" level.

We will do this.  Do I understand your specific suggestion to be that 
instead of using the label "Associate Member" you would like to be called 
"Chapter Member"?


> To work together with the chapters in order to research, discuss,
> test and apply identification systems to launch the individual
> membership level, guaranteeing that every interested citizen will have
> the right to one, and only one, vote (for free, of course).

I encourage you make suggestions on how we could do this.  I have been 
involved in extended technology discussion about how this might be done 
and we have come up with a practical system.

Keep in mind that a critical component of the system is control to the 
extent that it is not possible to bias an election.  That feature is 
nearly impossible to achieve unless you *trust* the Chapter. 
Unfortunately, although 99% of all the Chapters can be trusted, it only 
takes one to bias an election.  And I will point out that this very 
nearly happened in prior ISOC elections.  Thus, we need a system that 
does not require trusting Chapters.  It is sad that that is a requirement 
but that is where we are.

Jim