I don't know if there was an issue of vote padding with the last election, but due to the exponentially increasing size of the FT membership, I wonder if it may be a good idea to impose some sort of "registration" restriction on those who are allowed to vote in the upcoming Talkboard election.

Perhaps limit the ability to those who've been registered and posting members for a minimum of 6 months? I'm a firm believer that when it comes to post count "size doesn't matter", and wouldn't expect anything over say 10 or 20 posts, but I think to fairly consider who might or might not be a good choice requires having spent some quality time at least READING the boards and have added to at least a few conversations.

Comments??

If I am not mistaken, in a previous election there are safeguards in place behind the scenes and the FT staff can manually verify potentially fraudulent votes.

I agree with MissyDarlin. Reviewing the votes is different than preventing someone that just registered from voting or someone from voting multiple times.

JMHO.

Mary

I'm thinking that since the election was only announced in October that only those who were members prior Sept. 2004 and earlier should be voting just to avoid any problems.

I think it would be sensible to have a requirement of being registered prior to the TB election being announced.

I live on a kibbutz -- which is a very tight community -- with about 100 families. Almost every family has a computer and there is an internet connection in every house. I have no doubt that if I were to put a request up on the community bulletin board each and every one of these families would register on FlyerTalk for the sole purpose of voting for me.

Additionally, I am fairly well-known on several bulletin boards which have absolutely no connection to travel and over the years have made a number of friends there. Again, I could ask them to register just to vote and many would.

I will do neither but I should not be allowed even the possibility of doing so. It may well be technically within the rules right now, but I agree completely with Missydarlin that this needs to be taken care of right away. I would say that no vote, from any person who was not on FlyerTalk before the election was announced should be counted.

In other words, respecting the spirit of the law as well.

A good point, Dovster.

FewMiles..

I agree with what everyone's said above - I think it should be that one is required to be a member before the announcement was made. I like to think that most FT'ers aren't that unethical & if a candidate were to do that, that'd be a misfortune for all FT'ers as I personally wouldn't want that candidate being representative of me as an FT member.

MissyDarlin, seeing as there seems to be fairly widespread agreement on this -- including from several of the candidates (as well as the President of TalkBoard), let me officially request that TalkBoard have an urgent vote on the following resolution:

No vote from any FlyerTalker who was not already registered when the TalkBoard elections were announced should be counted.

With the elections starting this soon I think the decision should be up to the technical staff at FT and Randy, they will have to determine if this could be implemented...

Scott, you are right of course but that is true with any TalkBoard recommendation. What I am saying is that TalkBoard should take this position and let the House of Miles know its feeling.

With the travel schedules of the TB, its just not feasible for us to come up with any advice to offer Randy at this late hour. The polls open tomorrow. I've emailed Randy left the decision in his very capable hands.

Missy, I'm glad you raised the subject. I agree with those above that only those registered prior to the announcement date should be voting. Or along the lines of what you had initially posted, members with a "miminum membership timeframe" which means more informed voters as they've had a chance to read more posts and get a better feel for those who are running for TB. Hopefully Randy's team will be able to sort something out.

While I do not object to the spirit of the proposal, how is it going to be implemented? Would new FT members be disallowed to vote or is their vote going to be discarded?

On a related note, if someone's vote is discarded would they be notified? So if for some reason my vote is thrown away would I be notified (since I do not expect this to be the case)?

I don't know how it would be implemented. If Randy likes the idea, and it's deemed feasible, I'm sure he'll let us know how it works.