Thanks for your input, everyone. I don't think it's necessary to vote on this any longer as it's apparent that there are a fair number of beta players who have said permit without being kickstarters. An interesting point was brought up in the thread that spawned this poll though.
One poster mentioned thinking that beta backers who have submitted a lot (unknown amount) of bug tickets received the permit as a reward for this.
I'll resist making a second poll, but I'm interested to know how many of the beta/PBeta/alpha players WITH the permit have submitted a significant amount of bug reports. This is just to see if the comment mentioned above holds any water. Who knows, it's possible.