Sliding scale for voting?

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    • #1553
      John Cooper
      Participant

      Neville Shute, author of “A Town Like Alice” et al, wrote in his novel, “In The Wet”, (both about Australians) that the British Government had lost its way because of one man one vote and so much equality there was no leadership – and he suggested that the fictional Australian way of voting was far superior- because who wanted a train driver for PM, and a gardener as minister for health. Every Australian gets one vote at 21. You get a second vote if you have completed university, a third vote if you have lived overseas for two years, a fourth vote if you have an income over an agreed rate in recognition of exertion, a fifth vote if you are an official of a recognised Christian Church, another vote when / if you have raised 2 children to age fourteen without divorce, i.e. a sixth vote and you may get recognition by the queen and get a seventh vote- very rare.
      So the multiple vote leads to a better class of politician – ones who the public service could not boss around. (So far as I know it has not been suggested let alone trialled
      The suggestion that only qualified people should vote is interesting. What about the more qualified, then the highly qualified – why should they be lumped with the minimally qualified? Why wouldn’t they have a hierarchical representative vote like the fictional Oz system? Why wouldn’t a WGI Board member, who apart from being wise and insightful, knows all of the business of the world of CT, get votes for each level of training plus 5 for being a knowledgeable WGI member!)
      I think membership ought to be membership – everyone who is a member gets to vote. Maybe only people with a qualification can hold office on the WGI. To me it reinforces snobbery and class distinction. We will be leaving out more than we can ever get in.
      To disenfranchise some is not a democratic method.
      And to tell members of affiliates they have to pay to WGI to vote for their member to get to the WGI is very obnoxiously disenfranchising. Aren’t we losing more than we gain in memberships? Where is that data? Right now are there more faculty members paid up than any other group? If so are we over-empowering just the faculty members as the main cohort of voters in every affiliate?
      Is WGI in the Quality Worlds of people – why? / why not? how? – by saying “no you can sniff around our flash website but you can’t vote until you have undertaken 27.5 hours of expensive tuition which is only occasionally available in capital cities in some countries” is unlikely to prove a drawcard.
      Are we thinking internationally?
      I think as an organisation we are guarding the door to entrance and saying “no” yet again if we insist on a qualification = a vote.
      My teaching union on the other hand does have multi-tiered memberships – they relate to your pay scale ….? Principals, who almost never get helped by our union, must pay a very substantial fee compared to teachers. I have been a member since 1963 – maybe it influences my thinking!
      I’ll keep pitching!

    • #1613
      Brian Lennon
      Keymaster

      There are a few points here.
      First of all I too would be against the idea of some sort of meritorcracy for voting. What I do support is the idea of having voters who KNOW what they are doing. We don’t expect people from Australia to have a say in USA elections. All elections that I know of have some definition of who can vote and it’s usually those who have a vested interest in the election results. In our case voters would have to be members of WGI. How else could we call ourselves an organisation?

      That brings us to the second point: who is a member? A very basic requirement would have to be that a member supports the working of WGI financially. Otherwise we are daft! We are worrying about finances and then not sharing that burden with those for whom WGI exists.

      I agree that WGI is not fully in the QWs of people. That’s why I have been working almost non-stop for the past weeks on the new website. It plays a central role in the networking that is the main plus for WGI.

      It’s not qualification=vote; it is membership of WGI=vote in WGI.

    • #1614
      John Cooper
      Participant

      Hear Hear!

    • #1941
      Nancy Herrick
      Participant

      I think that membership (through financial support)is the most effective way to structure voting rights. I agree with Brian that people will be more invested and interested in voting for issues that affect them. If someone joins WGI international and does not have an affiliate group to align with, they would fall under Mitchell’s group of “the rest of the world” and could connect with Mitchell for inclusion in decisions that would be important to them. I do not think that we want to block anyone from voting on WGI issues if they are paying members to any WGlasser organization.
      This criteria will demand data accuracy and fee schedules and methods of payment to be agreed upon by all Glasser organizations. This is not to say that one size fits all, but an agreed upon operational procedure will be established, published and followed.
      Again we are back to the discussion: what’s in it for them? I believe that we may need to be flexible with our published structures for the next 5 years or so, until the affiliates and regions around the world can be a little more organized, and we have more available services and opportunities for our members. This is a work in progress…and we are just beginning to establish new directions. For now, I think that the “dues paying member” is the criteria for voting rights.

    • #2369

      Hello,

      I come from a background of Unions here in Quebec and this is a special, unique, and challenging experience. I recall when good friends of ours had their living room window broken by a brick thrown at the house by an angry union worker because the husband who lived there worked for Hydro Quebec, a company that provides electricity to the province.

      I understood from the lawyer’s explanation with the incorporation in Texas is that there is for profit or not for profit possibilities. Glasser Canada is a not-for-profit but we have three levels of membership and some with voting rights. I am not sure when our by-laws say ‘no voting rights’ that we still have paying members but some with voting rights.

      What concerns us in Canada is that few people shall vote for our new rep. Rolf and the Board has tried hard to encourage membership and, to the best of my knowledge, there were only about 49 people eligible to vote. I would like to work toward having reps be truly representative. Canada is moving into a federal election October 19th and it will be interesting to see the percentage of the vote. In Australia, people must vote!

      In any case, looking forward to the discussion.

      Many thanks,
      Jean

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