Re: Reducing the board size

[Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com>]

On 9/15/05, Richard M. Stallman <rms gnu org> wrote:
> It sounds like increasing the size of the board by 3 people could
> achieve both of the goals that Dave was talking about: to get more
> things done, and to have more contested seats **(provided enough people
> decide to run so as to make a real contest).** 
[Emphasis mine]

This last is the true problem. I know that in each of the past two
years there have been at least two candidates each year (and more last
year) who placed their name in nomination only because they felt it
would be embarassing if there were fewer nominees than seats on the
board, and/or because they felt the 'last' nominee would be a very
poor representative on the board. I certainly found myself in this
category last year.

To put it another way, in the current system, we're *electing* people
every year whose primary qualification is that they self-nominated and
are not completely unknown. We've not had an election in two years
where fewer than 1/2 of the candidates were elected, and in that year,
11 of 23 were selected. So instead of focusing on picking the most
qualified, we're focusing on disqualifying the handful of least
qualified. That's a terrible way of picking a quality board that can
work well together and get things done. If we picked a smaller number
of candidates, we'd have actual competition based on criteria like
time available, views on issues facing the board, etc., and I think
that would be very healthy for the board.

Luis