RE: No more Pollings!

["Jeffrey C. Sussman" <JSussman@erols.com>]

Poster: "Jeffrey C. Sussman" <JSussman@erols.com>

Greetings from Richard!

In my opinion, verbal pollings are a bad idea.  Verbal pollings selectively
poll the members of an order who happen to be at some event.  This
disenfranchises the members who don't happen to be at that event and robs
them of their one "right" as member of the order, which is the right to
advise the Crowns on any potential candidate.  I also believe this creates
an explicit responsibility on the parts of the Crown to read all polling
responses, but I digress.

I don't believe that current system of pollings is broken.  Much of the
current confusion is based on an unwarranted desire for a clear and
consistent description (a checklist even) of what it takes to be in an
order.

If we, instead, accept that each member of an order has a slightly different
yard stick by which they measure candidates and each set of royalty has yet
another yard stick and that decisions are made in an unequal combination of
all these opinions (since the Crowns make the final decisions) we don't have
a problem.

There is no objective standard.  The standards are based on the opinions of
the people involved.  We could get into a discussion about consensus
building, campaigning and information distribution but again I digress.

"Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"  (Who wrote that?  And, did I
quote it right?)

Richard Fitzgilbert

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