We should separate member status / voting rights from the writing access to repositories.
because
score: 1
Writing access is a quality of life improvement for developers but not needed for non devs. Voting rights on C level decisions need not to be tied to being a developer and thus should not be tied to writing access.
It creates a difficult atmosphere if a non-maintainer entity (a company with its personal agenda could buy votes, for example) defines the direction of the project.
Maintainer is just a word for someone with voting rights and writing access. That doesn't mean that anybody can just get voting rights after separating the two. There still can be the same process in place as now for getting them. Essentially people can get write access without voting rights.
A lot of the people vote without knowing the full consequence of a decision. This could skew the vote. Many votes cast are with the feeling of "whatever I'm just here to code". I think we should take that into consideration while distributing voting rights.