Because failure to appear at a public hearing was never an excuse for refusing to abide by the decisions made at that hearing.
Typically there's always a plethora of proxy options as well as lengthy response timeframes as well. Don't forget that. These things are not as simple as they are presented here. In fact, many processes in which failure of appearance results in a default decision etc provide extensive paths for extensions, reviews etc to give people every opportunity to voice their views if something prevents them. Typically you can't just set one date and say, if you can't make it you default. That's not how this works.
The board that made the recommendation/decision was elected by the membership. So it is a democracy.
.. By far the shortest definition of democracy I've ever seen. *sigh*
You already did (if you're a member) by electing the board who made the decision. Maybe you mean an absentee ballot system? After a while, that becomes an inefficient way to run the system.
How is that? Inefficiency is a reason to curtail your so-called democratic process? I think anyone who believes democracies are by nature efficient is out there. Dictators are by far the most efficient rulers as far as decision making is concerned. -- Christian Kuhtz, Sr. Network Architect Architecture, BellSouth.net <ck@arch.bellsouth.net> -wk, <ck@gnu.org> -hm Atlanta, GA "Speaking for myself only."