Attendance at AGMs is a perennial issue for most associations. For me LUV meetings clash with meetings of an incorporated association that I'm president of so I'm a "list only" member, which I suspect is the case for a majority of the membership (maybe I'm wrong there), and the reason I submitted a proxy. That same association has 300 voting members and we're lucky if we can get 15 - 20 actually bodies at the AGM. The quorum (10% of the voting membership) is made up typically with proxies.
The issue came as a surprise for me and none of the reasons given for the motion convinced me to even consider voting for it, mind you the case against was equally non-compelling.
This captures the nub of the issue for me at moment, quotation an earlier message in this thread:
"If this issue comes up again next year, I think we really need to have a carefully researched document (e.g. a FAQ), which is checked by Linux Australia for correctness, and updated based on mailing list feedback. This needs to be produced sometime before the meeting, so we can be sure people are making decisions based on the correct information."
I would add that we need to see a balanced and reasoned argument for both sides.