Re: Pay to vote

[Tom Brady <tabrady@mindspring.com>]

Poster: Tom Brady <tabrady@mindspring.com>

At 03:08 PM 7/20/97 -0400, some guy named Niall Dolphin wrote:
>	I would like to know what people would think about a kingdom policy of pay
>to vote. 

Atlantia does have a policy of pay to fight, but the KINGDOM has no policy
one way or the other regarding membership in baronial pollings.

>When the various baronies take a vote for their next Baron and Baroness,
>some of them 
>offer a part of the official polling to go to non-members to get their
>opinions. In no other 
>non profit organization that I know of does this happen.

I think, Niall, that you are confusing what a baronial polling is. It is
not a vote, it is a word of advice to the Crowns making the decision on who
will *they will choose* to fill the position. This is an important point:
the final decision on who a group's baron and/or baroness will be is solely
up to the King and Queen of Atlantia - no one else. In light of this fact,
you can see that your analogy to giving nonmembers votes in other nonprofit
organizations swiftly comes apart.

Note that this places a heavy burden on the Crowns: it is up to them to
acquaint themselves with the candidates, to read and consider all pollings
received, and to contact people within the group who know what is going on.
You can see that it is imperitive for those responding to the polling to
answer more just "yes" or "no."

Having organized a baronial polling some years ago, I have given much
thought to these matters. First, distributing pollings to nonmembers is
pretty much up to the individual groups - the most guidance I received from
kingdom level was "do it the way your group has done it traditionally." I
viewed the distibution of pollings to nonmembers as a courtesy, but not a
right. As soon as it becomes a right, you start dealing with problems of
locating *all* nonmembers, and making sure *everyone* gets a polling, as
opposed to getting a set of mailing labels from Milpitas for members.

>A pay to vote policy as far as I could tell
>would give a better idea to the crown of what the opinion is of the more
>active members of a group, or it would increase in membership because it
>would make people get off their behinds.

This makes the fallacious assumption that membership equals activity, or
gain for the group (beat ya to it, Tibor!). This assumes that a person must
be a member of SCA, Inc. in order to be active as a teacher, or artisan, or
to help clean the kitchen afat ha feast.

>As far as thoes people who
>consider themsleves too poor for a membership... an associate membership is
>not that expensive, and even at my poorest in college did I manage to pay..
>this was even before requirements for a membership for fighting.

Good for you. But don't assume that that works for everybody.

-Duncan, who could ramble on much more, but will shut up now
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Brady    tabrady@mindspring.com   SCA: Duncan MacKinnon of Tobermory
 See my web pages for links to the Society for Creative Anachronism and 
      gay and lesbian info: http://www.technomancer.com/~duncan/
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