PEP 308: Alternative conditional operator forms

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Tue Feb 11 23:32:43 EST 2003


Carel Fellinger wrote:

> same holds for pro's/contra's.  Just think about all those who don't
> read
> meandering threads:)

Well, of course.  No voting process is perfect, and I don't think anyone
here has any illusions about that.  My point is simply that it's not
clear what weight abstentions should have in a voting process where you
know that those abstentions are going to be severely underrepresented,
possibly massively so (because people who truly don't care simply won't
vote).

With the yes/no voters, you hope that it's a good cross-section of the
community, but of course there's no way to be sure of that.  But
certainly someone strongly in favor of the proposal is just as likely to
vote as someone strongly against it, so one would expect that as long as
the vote ballot reaches a wide enough audience, the yes/no voters should
be in the right proportions.  But you _know_ for a fact that the
abstentions will not be.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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