[Ambassadors] Are ambassadors happy with range voting for FAmSCo?

[inode0]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Carlos (casep) Sepulveda
<casep at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> 2009/12/21 Larry Cafiero <larry.cafiero at gmail.com>:
>> Apparently only 100 or so ballots were cast in FAmSCo. At the risk of
>> sounding like an electoral fundamentalist (or an Australian, where they are
>> required by law to vote), perhaps we should require Ambassadors to vote in
>> at least once every two years, or less (?), to keep their standing. Just a
>> thought.
>
> Less than 18%!
> So, if everyone here is a volunteer, there's plenty of time for voting
> (?), voting is so easy...
> Why we've less than 18% of voteS? (130/729)
> In fact, for the FESCo election there was 216, almost the double!
> Maybe everyone is good enough for the committee, so there is no need to vote...

We aren't comparing apples to apples there and the fact is that the
voter participation in the FAmSCo election is far higher than in any
other Fedora election now. Since FESCo allows anyone in FAS plus one
additional group to vote its pool of voters dwarfs the ambassador
pool.

I'm sure some people think all the candidates would do a fine job and
didn't participate for that reason, although casting a vote of
confidence in that case would be nice (give each candidate the maximum
votes allowed). Others don't care about governance for whatever reason
(just don't care, feel disengaged and/or unaffected by it, don't
understand what FAmSCo does and why it matters, etc.). Others fall
into a group of potential voters who don't feel personally well
equipped to vote, they don't feel they know the candidates or the role
of FAmSCo well enough to vote in a responsible way. I felt myself to
be in this last class not long ago.

I'm keen on increasing voter participation in a limited way. If we can
do things to make voters who are uncomfortable now confident they can
vote in a responsible way I'm all for that. If we can do things to
engage those who don't care now for a variety of reasons I'm all for
making them care.

All in all, I don't really think the turn out this election for FAmSCo
was all that bad.

I'll add that we might think some about encouraging more participation
in the candidate pool too. Only having a handful of non-committee
members willing to sit on FAmSCo bothers me more than a 17% or 18%
voter turn out.

John