Voted for
The 300 individuals excluded from the airdrop voted for a witness or a proxy. This action is openly encouraged on the blockchain by all witnesses. Some of them may have voted for a proxy months before Sun even arrived on the scene. Some may have voted for a proxy because the proxy said they were against downvotes. Some may have voted for an individual or proxy without much thought because someone said: "vote for the top 20 witnesses." Some may have been intentionally forcing a stalemate so that cooler heads would prevail (to avoid a chain split).
There is a myriad of reasons why people vote for the witnesses they select. Many people had strong opinions about the community witnesses and or Justin Sun. It should never be a witness's job to judge who an account voted for witness. Seeing as how the blockchain is flawed and dPoS and decentralization cannot live together peacefully in perpetuity, it forces the people controlling the chain to make tough decisions that violate one or more of the contradicting tenants of the blockchain.
In this case, it was very clear that JS may have been intent on breaking decentralization. I only say may because we don't know what would have happened if we didn't freeze his newly acquired assets. That said, omitting STINC and the astroturf socks from the new chain was reasonable.
Seeing as how HIVE is a continuation of Steem and I don't think that any of these individuals intentionally voted for a chain split where the community went one way, and dPoS went the other... It seems only right to allow these 300 individuals the airdrop. If we don't, we're telegraphing that HIVE witnesses might take deleterious actions against your account, or even freeze your stake if you have an unpopular vote or opinion.
Many of these individuals are getting judged not just by their vote, but also by their publicly expressed opinions. Many saw this as a struggle against a communist takeover. But if we take exclusionary action or inaction against the low-level accounts that we copied over to the new chain, then it seems to me that we're telegraphing that we have a voting system akin to a communist-regime. You get a ballot of the approved inner-party candidates, and you can select from them and only them. No write-ins. Express dissenting opinions about the platform or regime and the system of governance will treat you differently.
You can look at these two chains as completely unrelated entities, or you can acknowledge history and how they are forever related to one another. I choose to see the connection and acknowledge that people ought to vote for whomever they want. But because of the inherent flaws, decentralization will break from time to time, and so will dPoS. When these things happen, the governance of the chain must keep the collateral damage down to a bare minimum.
Even if some of these folks hated the prior witnesses, or talked trash about HIVE, they did so after they were excluded. I would wager to guess that none of these people are a threat to the chain's decentralization now that the ninja mine is securely isolated, and if they choose to cause market action by leaving, then perhaps that's for the better. Que será, será, that's more, or maybe even cheaper HIVE for people who want to stay here, buy or invest.
I'm a sucker for free and fair elections, and a large part of this has to do with not meddling with, judging, and or vetting the way that people vote for the candidates they select. You might need to manually add this to your poll results, and sorry for the great wall of text. You wanted feedback, and since I'm passionate about the subject, I figured I'd oblige. I don't know why HIVE signer requires an active key for dpoll? Can you add keychain support?
RE: What's your preference regarding the airdrop proposals?