“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship; you’ve gotta want it bad, cuz it’s gonna put up a fight.” --President Andrew Shepherd, The American President

Seems to me the moment TheDude announced there’d be member votes on instance policy and direction was the moment a certain subset of folks lost their minds. “We shouldn’t vote at all.” “Voting in a federation is pointless.” “We should restrict the vote.” “What if tHeY vote?!?!”

1. It’s early days. We will develop procedures that will work, especially as tools are developed for this still-young platform.
2. The matters that will be voted on here: Really not that serious. Stuff like electing new admins, federating/defederating with other instances, removing communities I have to imagine, on one of many instances in the Fediverse. This body won’t get to take away pensions or deny people healthcare. What doom do people foresee?
3. The way I figure it, we have a more general need to prevent mass account abuse, keeping out spam commenters etc. I figure a lot of those measures will also prevent a lot of problems with member votes. Those along with some straightforward principles like voters must be local members, voters accounts must be older than the discussion thread pertaining to this vote, A vote may not be an account’s first activity, etc. should be sufficient.