Re: Proposed revisions of Article 3: Membership

On Fri, Mar 19, 1999 at 10:12:07AM -0500, Nils Lohner wrote:
> The current discussion is about the general purpose of membership and
> its structure- we're not discussing voting etc. yet. Please keep this in
> mind and bring it up again when we discuss the voting after the basic
> membership issues have been decided on. Do you have any comments
> regarding membership and the three scenarios I proposed?

I don't think that the issues are distinct. Usually, when there are
distinct "levels" in a governmental organization the distinctive attributes
of those levels are their roles in voting processes. What is the purpose
of separating the membership into these various functional components? I
saw this as an effort to create focused groups of well informed members
that could carry out decisions on particular key areas without requiring
a vote of the complete body of members. I was suggesting the veto action
as a method for integrating the opinion of the larger membership body into
the actions of these smaller groups.

It seems to me that the mechanisms for arriving at consensus (voting, etc.)
are the primary motivator for making functional divisions within
the voting body.

Does that make sense?

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Ean Schuessler An oderless programmer work-a-like
Novare International Inc. Silent and motionless
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