[pp.int.general] court of arbitration (bridge building)

[Thomas Bruderer]

There are at the moment different discussions all involving the court of 
arbitration:

1.) The proceedings in general, yes it was not perfect. Especially the 
Leading of the second day was very poorly done. I was also very 
disappointed by his proceedings and the ignorance of proper procedure, 
however there was no complaint as far as I know which was directed 
directly at this. It was completly inappropriate that the candidates had 
no ability to present themselves, and it was done in a hurry. I support 
the remote voters in that, however on the counting side we really tried 
to give you all the information we had. The election was ad-hoc, also 
the parties present have not planned much.

2.) Remote votes and voting secret: I was counting the votes on site. 
There was no voting secret for the amandement changes, there was a kind 
of voting secret for the elctions, and STV was criticised already 
before. There are pro and cons for open and secret votings. this 
discussion is interesting in a general sense.

3.) Cryptopgraphic remote voting: It is possible to make it verifiable 
AND secret, but its not that easy. We do it in switzerland with our own 
software (OSS). Every election or vote is a compromise. STV is a 
compromise. Voting on a paper is a compromise. We need a solution which 
fits our purpose best. Please consider that the PPI conference is young 
and everyone involved makes mistakes. Propose better solutions for the 
future, which are suitable to our case.

4.) The vote on the court of arbitration shall be void: Sorry, thats not 
possible. There have been mistakes, and I am sure we could have done it 
better. Its not like they will do big decision and its not the board. So 
please calm down. It might be eurocentric, as the whole organisation 
sometimes is. But it's not bad intention! The Court of arbitration has 
memebrs from 7 different countries, its a good choice for an arbitration 
court. Can we settle this without starting a little war. We have better 
things to do than fighting about the representation in the court. In One 
year everybody will know that there is a court of arbitration and can 
prepare their candidates. I am sure everyone will have an equal chance 
to get elected.

5.) Other continents: I hope everyone understood that you felt not taken 
seriously, please make a proposal how to do it better. You are the ones 
who know how bad it was and what needs to be improved. The PPI can only 
improve if we know what goes wrong. Mistakes are part of life, lets 
learn from them.

And now both sides. Try to imagine the other sides point. The critics 
are sometimes rather harsh and not to the topic, I know there are 
personal tensions in PPI, we are not a uniform mass - but to be strong 
we need to concentrate on the issues, and how to solve them. It's not 
the time to fight personal wars and blame the rest.

Andrew: could you live with the current Court of Arbitration? Can we 
agree that it was not done properly and should have been done 
differently - but that we should not change an election ex post facto?