Steem Alliance, Free Fair Elections, and Me

It came to my attention, very late in the process, that @steemalliance was not going to include an option to express dissent in their election.
The option to express a no vote on all of the proposals is being denied to the community.

I simply asked that the dpoll include none of the above as an option to select.

We can safely know that most Steemizens are not aware of what is happening with the steem alliance foundation.

Those that bothered to register are a minority of the 50k daily active accounts. (I'm guessing.)
That reflects more on the apathy of our community than it does on the efforts of the steem alliance.
They are doing the best they can to get the word out.

If you have not registered, you are in luck, this election is about selecting one of the proposals that have been presented.
I'm sure the best one will prevail.
No thanks to you.

My issue with all this, aside from the general apathy of the average Steemizen, is that half of the choices are being omitted.
Only yes is being presented as an option.

The discussion of this matter fleshed out some opinions.

The issue wasn't raised in time.
There should have been a proposal submitted.
Adding this as an option will upset the apple cart.

What happens if nota wins?
It says that there are more options to be had than the ones presented.
Maybe folks get confused thinking that other options than the presented proposals exists.

All valid concerns.

Not valid reasons to exclude the option of none of the above, but valid, none the less.

My reasoning on the matter is that if the option to chose none of the above is omitted then the only choice presented is yes, yes, or yes.
No has been removed from the ballot.

I would have raised this issue sooner if it had occurred to me that the working group was failing to make dissent an option.
It never occurred to me that a free, fair, and open to the community election would keep no from being on the ballot.

Just for future reference, if you run a poll be sure to include options that you don't like, if you want to claim to be unbiased.
Also, if you want to claim to be 'community supported', then you need to include the voices of those that don't support you.
Otherwise free speech is not happening.

Excluding those opinions, because they make a mockery of the 3 months of work you just did, makes your poll biased.

If nota is not an option, no is taken off the ballot.
The election is not open.
Only yes is on the ballot.
Only yes can win.
You get to chose one or the other, but you cannot express your dissent to all the proposals.

This vote is only open to those that want to say yes to one of the proposals.

By including nota, we measure how much dissenting sentiment is in the community.
We already see that a majority of accounts didn't care enough to register to vote.
I haven't seen numbers on the percentage of stake that has registered.
But I am not comfortable conflating this apathy with lack of dissent.
I would rather actually measure it by presenting it as an option.

It is this option that makes your election fair.
If there is no option to say no, then your election is biased in favor of yes.

Yes?

Silencing folks when not silencing folks only requires one more option on the ballot, seems petty to me.
It makes it appear that you don't have confidence in what you have been doing.
It makes it appear that you have something to fear from the minority that express dissent on everything.

Include nota as an option on the ballot.
Excluding it is a mistake, imo.

It's not like folks will overwhelmingly sign up just to vote no.
In fact, isn't registration closed?

At this point, there is not much possibility that folks will wake up and see that they can monkeywrench something to express their disdain for the chain being hijacked by the linear rewards crowd.
Even if they did, registration is closed.

Better luck next time, dissenters.
We didn't get out in front of the silencers.

We have been silenced.