Re: Endorsements one by one [was Re: Endorsing David Neary]

[Dominic Lachowicz <domlachowicz gmail com>]

> Well that's totally against the spirit of voting. Current counts may
> change people's idea and might get them affected and they would vote
> strategically instead of on their own free will.

I'm sure that a large percentage of foundation memebers voted
strategically; they just did so blindly and of their own free will.

I don't know about other countries, but during elections in the US,
precincts report back data as they process it, and that data is
broadcast on the news. They'll say "55% of people voted for candidate
X and 40% for candidate Y with 20% of the votes counted so far".
Whether this is useful, harmful, or just airtime filler, I don't know.

The sociologist in me would be interested in seeing a histogram of
when people voted. My intuition is that the 2 week voting period is
longer than it needs to be, though we'll likely (always) see a surge
of voting towards the end.

> Actually what Stallman and others did during voting is campaigning and
> this should have ended before voting get started. It's very likely that
> some people on the middle of their voting see these endorsements and
> vote them to fill their seven people limit (because of their respect to
> Stallman or other endorser, not because they personally want the one in
> board) even though they do not know who those guys are.

Since when is listening to and trusting another person's informed
opinions wrong? And since when does campaigning not happen on election
day ;-) If I hadn't formed my own opinion and I trusted Richard
enough, I might follow his lead. I don't see anything wrong with
deferring to another person's good judgement. Nor do I see anything
wrong with a person convincing you to vote for candidate X when you're
on your way to the polls. You're always free not to listen and free to
inform (or not inform) yourself however you like to before you vote.
That's just democracy in action.

Best.
Dom