Re: Voting and W3C level of engagement

On 6/6/2014 1:07 PM, Sylvain Galineau wrote:
> On Jun 5, 2014, at 8:25 PM, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>
>> On 6/4/2014 9:57 PM, Karl Dubost wrote:
>>> Charles, Jeff,
>>>
>>> Le 5 juin 2014 à 06:54, Charles McCathie Nevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru> a écrit :
>>>> I think it is unfortunate that AC members cannot afford to be more engaged. But then, a lot of the members are quite small, and the cost of serious engagement in everything the AC does is quite high.
>>> # Elections (on topic)
>>> Some companies will join just for the publicity of being at W3C or for testing the water, which leads me to a thought about elections and decisions. It is said 25% of voters, which is low for a democracy.
>> I don't think that 25% is low for a democracy.
> Wait what? When 75% don't vote, the choice of the rest is simply unrepresentative of the whole. That is too low for any democracy.

Indeed that is why I expressed a preference of 90%+.

>
> Out of curiosity, what *is* your definition of low?

The number of votes in the last several elections have been:

98 (AB 2014)
60 (TAG 2013)
106 (AB 2013)
107 (TAG 2012)
50 (TAG 2011)
53 (AB 2011)

I would characterize 60, 50, or 53 as low.


>
>> It is low for Presidential races in democracies.
>> In those democracies that also have local races (common in the US), participation is lower than Presidential races.
> So the claim here is that within W3C the AB is less a Presidential or Congressional election than, say, a primary vote in the woods of West Virginia, or an election for Rotary Club Treasurer in Lonelyville, NY?

Actually, I made no mention of the woods of West Virginia or the Rotary 
Club.

According to fairvote [1], typical turnout for Congressional elections 
in the US midterm is about 40%.  I don't have comprehensive data on 
local elections, but when I searched for some article about that, I 
learned that 25% is quite typical for municipal elections [2].

[1] http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-analysis/voter-turnout/
[2] 
http://www.sarasotagov.com/InsideCityGovernment/Content/CAC/PDF/UofCalifornia.pdf

>
> Fair enough. That's certainly an effective way to lower expectations.
>
> I'm starting to get the hint this is really the wrong mailing list to figure out why anyone cares about the AB.

I don't understand this point.  Could you elaborate?

Received on Friday, 6 June 2014 20:31:49 UTC