Proposal: electronic voting for major issues

[David Lang]

Note that this is an initial strawman to get people thinking about it. It is expected that specific details will change, and I recognize up front that some people are utterly opposed to allowing anyone to vote who is not in the space. Since there is a proposal to throw all the voting rules out of the bylaws (to make them easier to change), I figured I should post this for discussion now.

*** Why should we do this ***
Currently the quorum for votes is extremely low, ~9% of cardholders to approve a new cardholder, and ~7% of members for other things (and this is before you consider that less than half of the quorum needs to vote to approve something if some vote abstain) Most organizations require 1/2-3/4 of eligible voters for a quorum.

It is good to have the people who are voting to be the ones dong the work and participating, but the current rules prevent voting input from people who's work/family commitments prevent them from being at the space on the particular night that the vote takes place (even if they are extremely active at other times), and at the same time gives people who have had no participation in HSL of of 5 minutes before and may not ever be seen again a full vote if they just pay a $25 membership fee.

I believe that making major changes (bylaw changes, granting someone unsupervised access, proposals with high price tags, say $1-5k)  should require more than 4-5% of the membership vote in favor of the change

As new as I am, I've heard some grumbling about how some votes seem to be stacked by people who show up in a regular participant cares about something that's on the agenda, but not at any other time (including non-voting activity)

A plausible justification for some of the bylaw changes that the last board made is to prevent a small clique from growing their power too rapidly (I am NOT a mind reader, and I do not agree with all of the changes, but this fear makes their approach reasonable, if not what I would want)

Low turnout elections give cliques who win them an inflated sense of their mandate and can cause other groups (especially those who have other commitments that prevent them from participating in an in-person vote) to feel helpless and feel like the organization is being hijacked

To address all these concerns (and make the cardholder nomination rate limit unneeded, and possibly the initial membership waiting time something that can be a tradition, not a hard requirement), I propose that we significantly increase the quorum required and provide a way for people who cannot make it to a particular HYH meeting to vote

This is modeled after the rules that OpenWRT  is currently voting on (after having watched them struggle to get enough people to vote to meet their quorum requirements.

*** How it would work ***

Summary

• This proposal makes no changes to the vote totals or margins required for a vote, just to the quorum needed and mechanism of the vote. It may be reasonable to do this, but initially the focus is on getting more people to participate in the vote.
• Quorum for a vote would be 50% of active eligible voters (see below for details and background). Like above, it may make sense to have different quorum levels for different votes, but that can be added later if it's desired.
• An explicit "Abstain" or "Present" vote counts towards satisfying the quorum requirement, but does not affect the result of the vote in any way.
• Vote mechanism:
  • For public ballots: email responses to a call to vote
  • For secret ballots: login to member website and vote there
• Duration of the vote: At least two weeks, but I can easily see one month being reasonable
  • Voters must be eligible to vote at the beginning of the vote
  • If the end-of-vote date passes with not enough people voting on the issue, the item is considered to be rejected (triggering the rules for resubmission)
• Early termination of the vote:
  • The person who submitted the item being voted on can withdraw it at any time, ending the vote.
    • This would count as if the proposal was voted down, triggering the limits on resubmission of a proposal
  • If enough of the total eligible voters vote that it is mathematically impossible for the outstanding votes to change the results, the vote can be ended and the fact that it was terminated early is to be reported along with the results
• Reporting: when the vote is recorded, the details of what is being voted on, the list of people who voted, and the vote totals are all to be reported (details can be linked, as long as the link is tamper resistant)
• Discussions can happen in person or online (slack and/or mailing list), almost anonymous messages (traceable only by infrastructure admins, only to be traced in case of code-of-conduct violations) can be entered on the member website and posted from there with the knowledge that the poster is a member that could vote on the issue, but not who it is.

*** Defining "active members" for quorum ***
The fact that someone is "active" or "inactive" in no way affects the ability to vote, it is only used to determine the quorum needed for the vote

The biggest problem with a volunteer community like ours doing online voting is determining what the quorum should be.  it is very possible to get into a situation where nothing can be passed because you can't get enough people to vote. HSL is unlikely to get quite that bad because our potential voters are all paying membership fees. But it can still be very hard to get members to respond, and pushing someone who is inactive may get them to vote, or may get them to decide they aren't using their membership and cancelling it.

By basing the quorum on 'active members', as membership grows or shrinks, the quorum stays some significant percentage without being so high that it is never met.

Since we do not track when members show up at the space, the best that I think we can do to get an idea of activity is identify the cardholders who scan their badges over a lengthy period (6 months or a year), and who has logged in to the member website over that same window. Logins to the member website need to be tracked as to the membership/cardholder status as only people who could vote for a given measure count towards quorum for that matter.

I do not know how many cardholders scanned their badges or how many members logged in to the member website over the last 6 months or year. I am interested in what those numbers are, but expect that people who want to have more say in the organization would scan in or login to increase the quorum numbers, so past activity is not a good indication of future activity. Again, not having scanned or logged in would in no way prevent you from voting, it would just allow the decision to be made with fewer votes.

Since general members who have not accessed the member website are not counted towards determining the quorum, it will be easier to achieve a quorum for such votes than the "% of active members" would imply.

*** Risks and Drawbacks ***

• Risk to Do-ocracy:
  • People who are paying members but don't show up can block the votes from those that do
• This adds a lot of rules and is slower than a show of hands at a HYH meeting
• Effort/impact:
  • This requires some effort, but the effort and maintenance should be small
  • in tracking votes via email (Job of the Secretary)
  • in programming a vote mechanism for the website
• Vote integrity:
  • As a general problem, vote security is hard, how can you get voting credentials out to everyone securely and prevent someone voting on behalf of someone else. In the case of HSL, the stakes are much lower, and as part of signing the release of liability, every member creates a login to our member website and has an email address that's traceable to the user through this registration.
• Secret or Public Ballots. Arguments exist both ways for secret and public ballots, remote voting weakens the secrecy of ballots (there is no way to know that someone wasn't standing over the shoulder of the person voting for example). Even with this I lean towards secret ballots.
• Ballot security for secret ballots can be achieved in our case by having the member site allow a person to vote, record that person voted in one database table, record the result of the vote in another database table (stored procedure call), and ensuring that the number of people who voted matches the number of changes to the vote total without tracking how each vote went.
• A periodic notification of who voted can let people catch if others vote in their name.
  • If you also send a running total of the result, it can encourage other people to vote and catch tampering with the vote totals, but with very few people voting, it can also allow people to deduce how someone voted (if only one person voted between one report and the next, you can tell how they voted, this can be mitigated by only including the running total if at least X (5??) people have voted since the last time the running total was sent out)
• Ballot security for public ballots can be achieved by holding the vote over email where anyone can see if there are votes that claim to be them.
• Ballot Stuffing. For cases where any member can vote, electronic voting has no way of preventing someone from buyin multiple memberships and voting all of them. The in-person equivalence is buying a bunch of memberships for family/friends who don't really care about HSL and telling them how to vote. If this is perceived to be a problem, it can be mitigates by requiring X months of membership before the vote. I don't think we need to worry about this in the context of HSL, but I am listing this to preemptively address the risk.

[Eric Ose]

I'll vote no on this if you want to have a positive effect on HeatSync Labs you should show up in person.

Eric Ose

Robot Ambassador

It's just an idea until there's a date and time included.

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[Brett Neese]

Even (maybe especially as) a board member, I’m not against divesting the board of some of it’s power, including that regarding changing the bylaws. With certain restrictions to handle things like ie ensuring the org continues functioning legally, this is entirely doable. This is what members have said they’re wanting, so it’s worth brainstorming what that process looks should look like. Even if it only applies to changing the bylaws, or replacing our currently bylaws with a new set.

It should take far more than 4% of the membership to agree to change the bylaws. That’s not democracy, it’s tyranny of the minority, and it’s necessarily exclusionary - which is the opposite of what members have said they wanted from the organization moving forward. It’s really no different than what got us into this mess in the first place with a small number of members imposing their will onto the entire organization. 

Brett

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[Luis Montes]

"It’s really no different than what got us into this mess in the first place with a small number of members imposing their will onto the entire organization. "

It is the polar opposite of that.  When the board makes decisions without input, the rest of the members have no say in that.

When something is up for a vote we have 50-100 people with say in the matter.  At least we're given the opportunity to vote whether or not we bother to show up.

Why should those of us that actually show up to the lab be subject to armchair quarterbacking online?

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[Brett Neese]

Why should 4 members who happen to be available on a given night or morning - keeping in mind, the other proposed changes would require ZERO advanced notice on proposals - be allowed to subjugate the other 100 members to their will?

For that matter, one could find 3 friends, make them members for one month, and pass whatever they would like, all in the span of less than one hour. That’s the opposite of democracy, particularly when we’re dealing with big changes like the bylaws.

Brett

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[Rick Blake]

I'm trying to make this as simple as possible. It seems the impetus for some of these recommended changes is the process of approving new card holders and we generally think that card holders should not only be involved, but should also be trustworthy. I'm not sure that relying on electronic voting because there are many members who can't attend hyh for various reasons is as big a problem as it seems, but it's worth thinking about. More importantly, to me, is the concept that we want to empower members who are not very involved, that involvement measured by their ability to attend hyh, to be voting on card members. How would they be able to evaluate a candidate's credentials, trustworthiness, and commitment to the lab? 

I'll confess I dislike online meetings, and always have, but they're necessary from time to time. I particularly don't mind electronic voting if it is a decision that requires plurality, but I tradition at the lab has been that perspective card members are generally voted on by other card members. Would we limit electronic voting on card member candidates to existing card members only? Can we do that with the membership database? I would be inclined to vote against this proposal.

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[Erik Wilson]

This doesn't look like an actual proposal, more like an idea for a proposal to talk about?

There are lots of open questions here and no real bylaw changes just an idea.

But I will support it if you add a clause excepting the situation where the online membership becomes zombified and only able to use zoom, or if the membership is replaced by an AI bot farm, in which case we should revert to in-person voting.

Problem solved!

[David Lang]

Eric Ose wrote:

> I'll vote no on this if you want to have a positive effect on HeatSync Labs
> you should show up in person.

payimg a membership fee is having a positive effect on HeatSync Labs

saying that someone must show up in person is one thing. saying that they must
show up in person for a particular hour is something very different. Especially
when you can't preduct ahead of time which particular hour you need to be
there.

David Lang

> Eric Ose
> Robot Ambassador <https://www.azrobotambassador.com/>

>> - This proposal makes no changes to the vote totals or margins

>> required for a vote, just to the quorum needed and mechanism of the vote.
>> It may be reasonable to do this, but initially the focus is on getting more
>> people to participate in the vote.

>> - Quorum for a vote would be 50% of active eligible voters (see below

>> for details and background). Like above, it may make sense to have
>> different quorum levels for different votes, but that can be added later if
>> it's desired.

>> - An explicit "Abstain" or "Present" vote counts towards satisfying

>> the quorum requirement, but does not affect the result of the vote in any
>> way.

>> - Vote mechanism:
>> - For public ballots: email responses to a call to vote
>> - For secret ballots: login to member website and vote there
>> - Duration of the vote: At least two weeks, but I can easily see one
>> month being reasonable
>> - Voters must be eligible to vote at the beginning of the vote
>> - If the end-of-vote date passes with not enough people voting on

>> the issue, the item is considered to be rejected (triggering the rules for
>> resubmission)

>> - Early termination of the vote:
>> - The person who submitted the item being voted on can withdraw it

>> at any time, ending the vote.

>> - This would count as if the proposal was voted down, triggering

>> the limits on resubmission of a proposal

>> - If enough of the total eligible voters vote that it is

>> mathematically impossible for the outstanding votes to change the results,
>> the vote can be ended and the fact that it was terminated early is to be
>> reported along with the results

>> - Reporting: when the vote is recorded, the details of what is being

>> voted on, the list of people who voted, and the vote totals are all to be
>> reported (details can be linked, as long as the link is tamper resistant)

>> - Discussions can happen in person or online (slack and/or mailing

>> list), almost anonymous messages (traceable only by infrastructure admins,
>> only to be traced in case of code-of-conduct violations) can be entered on
>> the member website and posted from there with the knowledge that the poster
>> is a member that could vote on the issue, but not who it is.
>>
>> *** Defining "active members" for quorum ***

>> *The fact that someone is "active" or "inactive" in no way affects the

>> ability to vote, it is only used to determine the quorum needed for the

>> vote*

>> - Risk to Do-ocracy:
>> - People who are paying members but don't show up can block the

>> votes from those that do

>> - This adds a lot of rules and is slower than a show of hands at a HYH
>> meeting
>> - Effort/impact:
>> - This requires some effort, but the effort and maintenance should
>> be small
>> - in tracking votes via email (Job of the Secretary)
>> - in programming a vote mechanism for the website
>> - Vote integrity:
>> - As a general problem, vote security is hard, how can you get

>> voting credentials out to everyone securely and prevent someone voting on
>> behalf of someone else. In the case of HSL, the stakes are much lower, and
>> as part of signing the release of liability, every member creates a login
>> to our member website and has an email address that's traceable to the user
>> through this registration.

>> - Secret or Public Ballots. Arguments exist both ways for secret and

>> public ballots, remote voting weakens the secrecy of ballots (there is no
>> way to know that someone wasn't standing over the shoulder of the person
>> voting for example). Even with this I lean towards secret ballots.

>> - Ballot security for secret ballots can be achieved in our case by

>> having the member site allow a person to vote, record that person voted in
>> one database table, record the result of the vote in another database table
>> (stored procedure call), and ensuring that the number of people who voted
>> matches the number of changes to the vote total without tracking how each
>> vote went.

>> - A periodic notification of who voted can let people catch if others
>> vote in their name.
>> - If you also send a running total of the result, it can encourage

>> other people to vote and catch tampering with the vote totals, but with
>> very few people voting, it can also allow people to deduce how someone
>> voted (if only one person voted between one report and the next, you can
>> tell how they voted, this can be mitigated by only including the running
>> total if at least X (5??) people have voted since the last time the running
>> total was sent out)

>> - Ballot security for public ballots can be achieved by holding the

>> vote over email where anyone can see if there are votes that claim to be
>> them.

>> - Ballot Stuffing. For cases where any member can vote, electronic

>> voting has no way of preventing someone from buyin multiple memberships and
>> voting all of them. The in-person equivalence is buying a bunch of
>> memberships for family/friends who don't really care about HSL and telling
>> them how to vote. If this is perceived to be a problem, it can be mitigates
>> by requiring X months of membership before the vote. I don't think we need
>> to worry about this in the context of HSL, but I am listing this to
>> preemptively address the risk.
>>
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>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "HeatSync Labs" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
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>> To view this discussion visit
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>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/heatsynclabs/51300994-0af7-4688-97f9-92235bc6f880n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
>> .
>>
>
>

[David Lang]

Rick Blake wrote:

> I'm trying to make this as simple as possible. It seems the impetus for
> some of these recommended changes is the process of approving new card
> holders

That is one thing driving some of this, but not the only thing.

the idea that a bylaw change can be approved/rejected by ~4% of our members
(note it still requires board approval) seems to me to be a problem.

similarly, the 'HSL should buy a boat' proposal being able to pass with 4% of
members voting for it seems like a problem.

Yes, it's possible/probable that if there is a contentious proposal or
candidate, more people will show up. But when the voting date can change
(because the person making the proposal doesn't show up) or the
discussion/notification time is short (one live proposal is to make the time
from making a proposal to voting be 9 days, so a proposal made Dec 30 would be
voted on Jan 8 this year, and another proposal is to remove any time requirement
from the bylaws entirely) requiring that everyone make it to a particular hour
to have a say is a problem.


The changes that happened over the last year put a bunch of stuff into the
bylaws (as opposed to being other documents on our wiki that supposedly should
only be changed via a HYH vote) solidified a bunch of things including
cardholder voting and the process for proposals.

> More importantly, to me, is the concept that we want to empower
> members who are not very involved, that involvement measured by their
> ability to attend hyh, to be voting on card members. How would they be able
> to evaluate a candidate's credentials, trustworthiness, and commitment to
> the lab?

just because a person does not attand a HYH does not mean that they are not
around the lab at other times.

there are people who only attend coffee and code, others who are only there on
mondays, others who only are there for sewing, etc.

I see it as the responsibility of the candidate cardholder and their sponsor to
get them to meet enough people to approve them

the current situation where the candidate cardholder only needs 3 votes at a HYH
meeting (after time requirements) strikes me as a problem. (and yes, if someone
is trying to push a friend in, they probably will need a few more, but not many
more votes)

> I'll confess I dislike online meetings, and always have, but they're
> necessary from time to time. I particularly don't mind electronic voting if
> it is a decision that requires plurality, but I tradition at the lab has
> been that perspective card members are generally voted on by other card
> members. Would we limit electronic voting on card member candidates to
> existing card members only?

Yes, we have a list of who the existing cardholders are (it is in the system to
allow those cards to work) so only existing cardholders would be able to vote
for new cardholders.

This would not be an online meeting with the vote taking place during that
meeting (that would still be better than what we have, but would still require
all schedules to align.

this would be more like

email goes out:
VOTE: cardholder candidate David Lang

<blurb from me and my sponsor>

This vote will conclude on Nov 30
If at least 20 people do not vote (yea/nay/present) this candidate will be
rejected

<voting instructions>



then on a regular basis, a message would go out in the email thread

The vote for cardholder canidate David Lang is ongoing

the current vote totals

the following people have voted
list of names



does this clarify things?

David Lang

[Antonio Contrisciani]

just spitballing but heres an idea:

The last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (or maybe two days or even one day) will be reserved as HSL Voting days of each month. Any member may come in at any hosted time during those days and fill a ballot out and seal it and then present themselves to the current host to be recognized as a member and drop their ballot in a sealed ballot box. After the three days (or whatever) have elapsed two official ballot tabulators will tally the ballots separately and compare counts for verification, then present the results of the vote on the first day of the following month. That should leave enough wiggle for accidents and shenanigans but keep the idea alive that you have to come in in person and drop a vote, but not at a specific hour or day. It shouldnt be too hard to find two people a month to tally ballots and the hosts are already there for open hours and just have to watch to make sure no one double enters. We can even print a member registry and have them check people off as they drop off their ballots for an extra level of security.

just a thought.

[David Lang]

Erik Wilson wrote:

> This doesn't look like an actual proposal, more like an idea for a proposal
> to talk about?

It is, I wanted to get discussion, and since I wasn't getting it on slack, I
posted it here.

I wanted to get all options out initially. I'll post a much stripped down
version (what I would personlly want) later today to help the conversation
along. I didn't want to make it seem like I am only after one particular result.

> But I will support it if you add a clause excepting the situation where the
> online membership becomes zombified and only able to use zoom, or if the
> membership is replaced by an AI bot farm, in which case we should revert to
> in-person voting.

how would such a clause work? One problem that OpenWRT is facing right now is
that they have a large membership and getting enough of them to vote to meet
quorum is a big problem.

that's why I have the 'active members' section, counting what cardholders have
visited the lab and what members have bothered to login to the memeber website
over the prior 6 months. If very few members choose to do that, then it will not
require a lot of votes to go forward.

would you want an escape clause that the board can invoke?

David Lang

[Antonio Contrisciani]

Oh and this would be a summary vote of all eligible proposals on the table, from the first through the twenty whateverith of the month, all rolled up into a single ballot.

[Antonio Contrisciani]

how would such a clause work? One problem that OpenWRT is facing right now is
that they have a large membership and getting enough of them to vote to meet
quorum is a big problem.

that's why I have the 'active members' section, counting what cardholders have
visited the lab and what members have bothered to login to the memeber website
over the prior 6 months. If very few members choose to do that, then it will not
require a lot of votes to go forward.

would you want an escape clause that the board can invoke?

This is a tricky slope David. Often when I come to the lab my hands are full so Landon or the host or another member opens the door for me. I do my business whatever it is and then leave, without having once scanned my card. Does that make me an "active member?" If someone else has already opened the doors before I get there for 3d print day and someone is staying after, I may not login into the website either. It's entirely plausible, not just possible, that despite being in the lab weekly and hosting monthly 3d print days I would not appear on either the scanned card or logged into website lists. Would that invalidate my right to vote? Likewise a member could just swing by once every six months and "bump" the card reader and never go in and remain "active" on your list as well.

[David Lang]

Antonio Contrisciani wrote:

> just spitballing but heres an idea:
>
> The last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (or maybe two days or even one day)
> will be reserved as HSL Voting days of each month. Any member may come in
> at any hosted time during those days and fill a ballot out and seal it and
> then present themselves to the current host to be recognized as a member
> and drop their ballot in a sealed ballot box. After the three days (or
> whatever) have elapsed two official ballot tabulators will tally the
> ballots separately and compare counts for verification, then present the
> results of the vote on the first day of the following month. That should
> leave enough wiggle for accidents and shenanigans but keep the idea alive
> that you have to come in in person and drop a vote, but not at a specific
> hour or day. It shouldnt be too hard to find two people a month to tally
> ballots and the hosts are already there for open hours and just have to
> watch to make sure no one double enters. We can even print a member
> registry and have them check people off as they drop off their ballots for
> an extra level of security.
>
> just a thought.

who is going to man the lab to let people in and check them off the list to
prevent double voting?

expanding the voting to hosted times is a lot better than a HYH, but I think it
would need to be at least a week for normal schedles, and then there is the
issue that the last week this month is thanksgiving, so many people will be
traveling.

that sort of thing is why I am proposing electronic voting rather than a wider
in-person voting window.

But if enough people are absolutly opposed to electronic voting, in-person
voting over at least a week would be a much better situation than what we
currently have.

David Lang

[Antonio Contrisciani]

who is going to man the lab to let people in and check them off the list to

prevent double voting? - the host. They are already there and should be paying attention to who enters and leaves anyways.

expanding the voting to hosted times is a lot better than a HYH, but I think it
would need to be at least a week for normal schedles, and then there is the
issue that the last week this month is thanksgiving, so many people will be

traveling. - We could make arrangements for holidays, as christmas would also tend to fall on the last week of the month. I think a week is excessive. We are able, as a country, to get our voting done on a single election day + mail in ballots for special cases. I don't see why 2-3 days wouldn't be sufficient for at most a couple hundred people to drop off a ballot

that sort of thing is why I am proposing electronic voting rather than a wider

in-person voting window. - electronic voting has a number of flaws. Its much harder to ascertain that a person is who they say they are. Just because they have a login, does not necessarily mean thats the person the login belongs to. Say you were to accidentally leave yourself logged into a laptop at the lab when opening and shutting the doors one day, someone could use that laptop to pre-empt your vote and place it in opposition to what you want. Likewise, currently we have strict rules in place to prevent someone else from using your card to access the facility and it would be nearly impossible to have someone intentionally vote on your behalf, but with electronic voting anyone who has your credentials could vote for you. If for instance, a member couldnt be bothered to make it to a specific vote they could just have a spouse, friend, or even someone completely foreign to the lab log in and vote for them.

Certainly there are ways around these hurdles, such as requiring a camera when voting to record an image of the person using the pc, but then that raises privacy concerns and could be spoofed a number of ways. Without an extremely rugged, 2 factor or passkey encrypted voting system I think the risks are just too great for too low a benefit. 

But if enough people are absolutly opposed to electronic voting, in-person
voting over at least a week would be a much better situation than what we
currently have.

[David Lang]

On Sat, 8 Nov 2025, Antonio Contrisciani wrote:

> This is a tricky slope David. Often when I come to the lab my hands are
> full so Landon or the host or another member opens the door for me. I do my
> business whatever it is and then leave, without having once scanned my
> card. Does that make me an "active member?" If someone else has already
> opened the doors before I get there for 3d print day and someone is staying
> after, I may not login into the website either. It's entirely plausible,
> not just possible, that despite being in the lab weekly and hosting monthly
> 3d print days I would not appear on either the scanned card or logged into
> website lists. Would that invalidate my right to vote? Likewise a member
> could just swing by once every six months and "bump" the card reader and
> never go in and remain "active" on your list as well.

currently, everything you are saying is correct. But if you knew that scanning
the card counted for something, wouldnt you do it once in a while? at least once
every couple of months?

As I tried to emphisise active vs inactive has no effect on your right to vote,
all it does is help determine the quorum (how many people need to vote for the
mesaure to pass)

what we don't want is to say that a bylaw change requires the approval of 3/4 of
the members and then have 200 members, and we can't get more than 50 to bother
to vote, so we can't even change the number of votes required.



this is trying to do two things.

1. get more people to vote

2. not let the requirement for the number of people to vote so high that we
can't make any changes

the ONLY thing that active/inactive counts for is if you count towards the
number of votes required

David Lang

[David Lang]

Antonio Contrisciani wrote:

> Oh and this would be a summary vote of all eligible proposals on the table,
> from the first through the twenty whateverith of the month, all rolled up
> into a single ballot.

that I would oppose, there needs to be time for people to find out about the
proposals, question them, etc before the vote takes place.

If you have the vote in November cover proposals made in August, that's fine.
But allowing for a proposal to be made within a few days fo the vote is a
problem

David Lang

[Antonio Contrisciani]

I should add that I am strongly opposed to leaving votes tied to HYH regardless. I have an obligation on thursday evenings that prevents me being at the lab. I have to be somewhere from 5 until 8 pm every thursday, without exception. The few times I have come in for an important vote required significant maneuvering and rescheduling of a lot of moving parts that left a number of people very unhappy. I can generally make saturday hyh, but theres no guarantee a proposal will be voted on on a saturday as opposed to a thursday and we have historically had a bad habit of publishing in advance what proposals are being voted when. In addition, if I myself have a proposal up, it will ALWAYS be on saturday as I cannot be there to present it thursdays. It has nothing to do with my commitment to the lab, my willingness to be there, or the time i spend the rest of the month in the lab, its entirely about a single conflicting timeslot that has caused me to miss multiple important votes. ANY solution would be better than the current state of affairs.

[Antonio Contrisciani]

I would personally put some guide rail on this as well, if we require a proposal to be voted the month after its proposed, it would always have at a minimum 27 days of discussion and notice. You also wouldnt have to worry about calculating days from when the proposal was made. IF proposal was made even as late as the 31st of october, it would be voted 11/28, 11/29, 11/30. That would provide a minimum of 29 days (28 + the day the proposal was made, 26 + the day in a worst case february) for discussion and notification.

[David Lang]

On Sat, 8 Nov 2025, Antonio Contrisciani wrote:

>> who is going to man the lab to let people in and check them off the list to
>> prevent double voting?

> - the host. They are already there and should be paying attention to who
> enters and leaves anyways.

this really should be more than one person, but that's a step in the right
direction

> expanding the voting to hosted times is a lot better than a HYH, but I think
> it would need to be at least a week for normal schedles, and then there is the
> issue that the last week this month is thanksgiving, so many people will be
> traveling.

> - We could make arrangements for holidays, as christmas would
> also tend to fall on the last week of the month. I think a week is
> excessive. We are able, as a country, to get our voting done on a single
> election day + mail in ballots for special cases. I don't see why 2-3 days
> wouldn't be sufficient for at most a couple hundred people to drop off a
> ballot

As a country, we now have voting season with some states having a 45 day window
for you to cast your votes and many states being 100% mail-in ballots

and on voting days, the polls are open for 12 hours so you can find some time in
your day to go vote

and the voting should have a higher priority than a HSL vote :-)

a couple days of 7-10pm plus a 12-5pm window is not nearly the same

(for the record, I think the public elections should be much more restricted
than they are and mail-in ballots are a security nightmare that destroy the
secret ballot)

> that sort of thing is why I am proposing electronic voting rather than a wider
> in-person voting window.

> - electronic voting has a number of flaws. Its
> much harder to ascertain that a person is who they say they are. Just
> because they have a login, does not necessarily mean thats the person the
> login belongs to. Say you were to accidentally leave yourself logged into a
> laptop at the lab when opening and shutting the doors one day, someone
> could use that laptop to pre-empt your vote and place it in opposition to
> what you want. Likewise, currently we have strict rules in place to prevent
> someone else from using your card to access the facility and it would be
> nearly impossible to have someone intentionally vote on your behalf, but
> with electronic voting anyone who has your credentials could vote for you.
> If for instance, a member couldnt be bothered to make it to a specific vote
> they could just have a spouse, friend, or even someone completely foreign
> to the lab log in and vote for them.

as a general statement on electronic voting, I agree with you 100% and would go
a lot further into the question of how you distribute the credentials, and how
can you make sure that your abusive spouse, union boss, neightborhood gangster,
boss at work, etc isn't looking over your shoulder to approve your vote.

however for the use case of HSL, the stakes are not that high, we create
accounts on the member site when a person joins, etc. So I see it as a
reasonable option for our case.

by publishing the list of who has voted on a regular basis during a vote, we can
at least catch that there are shenanigans going on (your name shows up and you
didn't login to vote). This can be investigated through server logs, and if it
happens enough we can invalidate the vote for fraud (but it would need to be
enough people to matter, we don't want one person to claim fraud to ivalidate a
vote they are on the loosing side of)

> Certainly there are ways around these hurdles, such as requiring a camera
> when voting to record an image of the person using the pc, but then that
> raises privacy concerns and could be spoofed a number of ways. Without an
> extremely rugged, 2 factor or passkey encrypted voting system I think the
> risks are just too great for too low a benefit.

If you were talking out public elections, I would absolutly agree with you.

But for HSL, I don't see the risks as being that high.

I would even accept voting in public on a mailing list. no secret ballot. Yes,
emails can be forged, but if that starts happening, it can be investigated and
would be a code-of-conduct violation that would get someone thrown out of the
organization.

David Lang

[David Lang]

Antonio Contrisciani wrote:

> I should add that I am strongly opposed to leaving votes tied to HYH
> regardless. I have an obligation on thursday evenings that prevents me
> being at the lab. I have to be somewhere from 5 until 8 pm every thursday,
> without exception. The few times I have come in for an important vote
> required significant maneuvering and rescheduling of a lot of moving parts
> that left a number of people very unhappy. I can generally make saturday
> hyh, but theres no guarantee a proposal will be voted on on a saturday as
> opposed to a thursday and we have historically had a bad habit of
> publishing in advance what proposals are being voted when. In addition, if
> I myself have a proposal up, it will ALWAYS be on saturday as I cannot be
> there to present it thursdays. It has nothing to do with my commitment to
> the lab, my willingness to be there, or the time i spend the rest of the
> month in the lab, its entirely about a single conflicting timeslot that has
> caused me to miss multiple important votes. ANY solution would be better
> than the current state of affairs.

full agreement, you are a perfect example of why I am proposing a change. you
and I are just debating what should be (and that is exactly why I posted this
proposal)

David Lang

[Eric Ose]

David you are correct that people who donate do have a positive effect on the lab.

Hack Your Hackerspace has always been focused being in the space to clean, organize and otherwise improve the space. You are presenting a solution and not a problem. The solution you are trying to address ignores the goals behind requiring people to be present to participate and vote at HYH.

You also say "...and another proposal is to remove any time requirement from the bylaws entirely) requiring that everyone make it to a particular hour to have a say is a problem. "

This is incorrect. Proposals were due 7 days prior to HYH. This is why there wasn't a proposal for the Maslow CNC. Even with the 7 days I didn't have time for a proposal. This is described elsewhere and the disagreements that ensued. Regardless some things just aren't possible if we have to delay them up to 49 days.

Here you can see the various places on our wiki that still reference having to propose things ahead of time.

https://wiki.heatsynclabs.org/wiki/Hack_Your_Hackerspace

Proposals for voting are posted on the email list board immediately following HYH for the next HYH period

https://wiki.heatsynclabs.org/wiki/Walk_Through_Orientation

To make proposals, just send an email to the google group with the word proposal in the subject.
    A week before the next meeting, draft proposals are due and a community member should compile the proposals into an agenda for voting.
    Final/amended proposals are due 24 hours before the meeting.
    The person who made the proposal or someone they choose in advance needs to be there to represent the proposal.

https://wiki.heatsynclabs.org/wiki/Tool_Acquisition_HOWTO

A proposal must be submitted one week in advance of the next Hack Your Hackerspace

Eric Ose

Robot Ambassador

It's just an idea until there's a date and time included.

[David Lang]

On Sat, 8 Nov 2025, Eric Ose wrote:

> David you are correct that people who donate do have a positive effect on
> the lab.
>
> Hack Your Hackerspace has always been focused being in the space to clean,
> organize and otherwise improve the space. You are presenting a solution and
> not a problem. The solution you are trying to address ignores the goals
> behind requiring people to be present to participate and vote at HYH.

having people at an HYH does not mean that those people stay around to help
clean. We have seen that in recent meetings where there have been a lot of
people, until the cleaning started.

I do not buy into the idea that we should limit voting to HYH meetings to force
people to help clean.

> You also say "...and another proposal is to remove any time requirement
> from the bylaws entirely) requiring that everyone make it to a particular
> hour to have a say is a problem. "
>
> This is incorrect. Proposals were due 7 days prior to HYH. This is why
> there wasn't a proposal for the Maslow CNC. Even with the 7 days I didn't
> have time for a proposal. This is described elsewhere and the disagreements
> that ensued. Regardless some things just aren't possible if we have to
> delay them up to 49 days.

if there had been a longer discussion, you may have discovered that you could
get it for free by just identifying that you are a hackerspace.

I consider 7 days from proposal to vote to be FAR too short. the current bylaws
that require the proposal start at least 30 days before the vote and the
proposal get locked into a final form 7 days before the vote seems very
reasonable to me.

> Here you can see the various places on our wiki that still reference having
> to propose things ahead of time.
>
> https://wiki.heatsynclabs.org/wiki/Hack_Your_Hackerspace
>
>> Proposals for voting are posted on the email list board immediately
>> following HYH for the next HYH period

how can that happen if the proposal doesn't even need to be made for another
week or two after the HYH meeting?

>
> https://wiki.heatsynclabs.org/wiki/Walk_Through_Orientation
>
>> To make proposals, just send an email to the google group with the word
>> proposal in the subject.
>> A week before the next meeting, draft proposals are due and a
>> community member should compile the proposals into an agenda for voting.
>> Final/amended proposals are due 24 hours before the meeting.
>> The person who made the proposal or someone they choose in advance
>> needs to be there to represent the proposal.
>
>
> https://wiki.heatsynclabs.org/wiki/Tool_Acquisition_HOWTO
>
>> A proposal must be submitted one week in advance of the next Hack Your
>> Hackerspace
>
>
> Eric Ose

> Robot Ambassador <https://www.azrobotambassador.com/>