Originally Posted by
kokonutz
Yes, that is precisely the 'I know better than the voters what they should want so I shall impose it on them' attitude to which I refer.
Why are you and others so unwilling to let the voters look at what a flyertalker posts in the election forum and make their own decision as to whether they want that person representing them?
Who are YOU or anyone else to tell them who is worthy to stand and who is not?
Let each flyertalker decide that for him or herself based on what they read in the election forum and let the chips fall where they may.
Well, virtually all institutions that I know of do have eligibility and disqualification rules. Strangely enough, I do not find it an unbearable affront to democracy that, e.g., somebody recently convicted of murder should be ineligible from standing as a candidate to a national parliament, for instance. Now, don't get me wrong. I am not saying that committing murder is in any way comparable to infringing ToS.
What I am saying, however, is that it is a travesty of the concept of democracy to argue that having eligibility and disqualification rules is undemocratic.
And you dismiss
Clue's argument a little lightly, imo: even if we were to go for that demagogic notion of democracy that you put forward, you would have to accept that non-disclosure and discussion of a candidate's ToS violation history skews the capacity of the voter to make an informed judgment. And given that we cannot have full disclosure (good thing imo, but that is another debate), it is rather difficult to get all high and mighty on "what the voters want."
Anyway, it seems to me that we are going round in circles and we are not adding any new elements to what has already been said in the other thread. There is enough there for TB members to form a view as to what the arguments are. So, until somebody comes out with a new argument, I think that I will bow out of this discussion.