Change "group vote" system to prevent spamming

Hi,

I've noticed in the few months I've been using SL that the owners of groups you are in never use the voting system for voting. They use it for distributing spam. There's no way to opt out and remain in the group.

Here's an example:
Corsi Mousehold has proposed to vote in Second Life.
HEY EVERYFUR!!! Remember, The 31st is the deadline to have your entry fee for the building contest for the month of May to build the new Furnation Welcome area!! And until the end of the month the entry fee is .... FREE!!! Pester chmarr Walcott!!

Clearly there's nothing up for vote here. I've gotten other messages like this in other groups, too. It seems that the group owners use the voting system for announcements, which makes the "voting" part pretty useless. Plus when the "vote" doesn't pass, you get another copy of the same spam.

I've reported a number of abusers of this system, but I always get the same canned response and I have no idea if anything was actually done, because all I keep getting spammed until I leave the group.

I don't think it's fair for me to have to leave a group or turn off getting e-mail notifications from SL to keep from getting spammed.

I propose one or more of the following:

-Remove the "voting" system from the Groups feature to prevent spamming
-Provide a way to join a group, yet opt out of the "voting" messages
-Provide an announcement system for group owners so they can spam people only once and allow the group members to opt not to get messages from group owners

If being a member of a group means you HAVE to get "voting" messages, this is considered unsolicitted mail, which is, of course, spam.

I like option 3: a Announcement system.

Just posting a *me too* here. An announcement system for groups to allow voting to be used as originally designed and allow group members to opt out of bulk messages would be a great addition.