[r6rs-discuss] voting process

[Marc Feeley]

On 3-Nov-08, at 11:26 AM, William D Clinger wrote:

>>
>> The single transferable vote mechanism, with which I have
>> no experience, appears to promote proportional representation.  This
>> is not the most important property to optimize.  A steering committee
>> with divergent opinions would be a disaster, yet nothing in the
>> election process guards against it.
>
> Here I have to disagree a bit, because I believe
> it is important for the Language Steering Committee
> to act on behalf of the diverse community, which
> definitely contains divergent opinions.

I meant divergent opinions on the "soul" of Scheme and on the goals.   
In other words fundamentally divergent opinions on Scheme and the  
design process.  The message(s) from the SC to the EC must be clear  
and direct.  That will simply not happen if there is discord at the SC  
level.  Divergent opinions are good, and necessary, as long as the SC  
members are comfortable in discussing the issues to converge on a  
common position, but fundamentally divergent opinions will kill the  
process.  I believe the EC can tolerate more divergence of opinion.   
Here too it can be a problem that stalls the process, but the SC can  
step in in those cases.

Do you think it is inappropriate to ask the electorate to vote on  
coalitions?

Moreover, I propose that each coalition make their "platform" public  
so that the electorate can vote with more information than simply a  
person's notoriety in the Scheme world.  To be clear, the vote should  
be on a group of people and a plan, not just on individuals.

Marc