Originally Posted by Shareholder
For an American to set the standards for any democracy with respect to voting is a huge April Fools Joke. Your country set the standard for rendering the very concept of democracy meaningless with the 2000 Presidential vote where the candidate receiving the most votes lost! Not only that, the Supreme Court intervened to stop any true vote in a state that could have changed the final results...and led to a change in the ultimate results.
And now the world knows the scandal of turning over voting to private corporations that make machines that can be tampered with and leave no evidence trace!
Further, the USA is the only country that requires those wishing to vote to register the party they intend to support!
I suggest this decision by FT reeks of this same self-serving hippocracy. If you need stickers and stars to prove you're a good citizen, then go back to kindergarten. I stand by my original complaint that this is a violation of personal privacy and yet one more "enhancement" to FT that needs serious reconsideration.
I am going to vote today, but not for the FT board...but rather in my local civic elections. And I don't need a "good citizen" sticker to praise me for doing this... This is not Iraq or any country that requires your thumb to be ink stained to prevent double voting. This is plain insensitivity and stupidy.
And I still have not had an answer as to who's idea this was and when it was passed by the current TalkBoard.
Until I read this post, I was open-minded about the issue.
Now, however, I'm taking the avatars to be akin to getting ink on the finger when voting. People that want to hide the ink on their finger have to either wear a glove or wait for it to disappear over time. I consider the post in this thread about removing the avatar to be akin to that glove-wearing or gradual disappearance.