Home
I happened to be reviewing the founding and failure of the HGAA which ultimately led to the founding of the U.S. Hawks. On June 4, 2010, I had started a topic on hanggliding,org to call for leaders and founders for a new national hanggliding association. That topic has since been chopped up by Jack Axaopoulos, but you can still read what was said here on the U.S. Hawks:
https://ushawks.org/HGAA/Call_for_Leaders_and_Founders/
On page 11 of that topic, I began to explore the possibilities of using different voting systems for the new organization. I posted my comment on June 9th, 2010:
https://ushawks.org/HGAA/Call_for_Leaders_and_Founders/Leaders11.html#190635
The voting discussion was eventually continued on the HGAA forum (hgaa.org), and it led to a long and bitter argument. Jack Axaopoulos was apparently in love with the "Range" voting system, and he used his control of the forum to force that system on the team. I argued that when push came to shove, people voting under the "Range" system wouldn't vote with an actual "range" and would instead vote the extremes (0 and 100 in the HGAA system). It's just human nature. Jack claimed that anyone voting the extremes would be recognized as being "corrupt" (his word), but he offered no solution to the problem. However, Jack's threats of calling people "corrupt" put enough fear into his opponents that they were afraid to vote in those extremes which allowed them to be defeated by Jack and his team ... who DID vote in the extremes.
It's interesting to look back at the history of the HGAA over a decade ago and see where it went astray. It's also interesting to look back and see the seeds of our own US Hawks voting system being planted back on June 9th, 2010.
