dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake) (02/25/84)
I suppose the propsed ACM Constitutional amendment is better than
the present situation, but why not incorporate some sort of statistical
sampling into the system? Go ahead and first class mail the ballots
to 90+% of the members but pick a 10-% subset to whom you could send
the ballot certified mail, return receipt requested, and enclose a
pre-stamped return envelope and a strong appeal to the recipient
to vote as one of the randomly selected sample?
+ Donald E. Eastlake, III
ARPA: dee@CCA-UNIX usenet: {decvax,linus}!cca!deegts@ucbopal.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (02/28/84)
Groups and individuals that seek change and are frustrated by the exisiting order always seek to reduce the number of persons that need to be influenced in order to get their way. If 1/3 of the membership do not care to vote, the issue is clearly not important enough for the change to occur.
rjnoe@ihlts.UUCP (Roger Noe) (02/29/84)
>> If 1/3 of the membership do not care to vote, >> the issue is clearly not important enough for the change to occur. That's a terribly simplistic argument. ACM has experienced tremendous growth in recent years and much of the voting membership is no longer composed of professional computer scientists. Many of these newer members simply do not care to vote on ANYTHING. The issue here is that ACM has been put in the very difficult position of being unable to govern itself because it is all but impossible to amend the constitution. This is not a sign that the people trying to bring about this change are being selfish at all. Others can still vote against any proposed amendment if they care enough to vote. And that's the whole issue here: to see to it that ACM continues to be run by the members who really care about how it is run, not by the mindless inertia of a bunch of apathetic morons. Ten percent of the voting membership now is still more than one-third of it used to be. Roger Noe ihnp4!ihlts!rjnoe AT&T Bell Laboratories