[AFS3-std] Second Draft of Standardisation Document

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

--On Thursday, August 28, 2008 12:32:03 AM -0400 Steven Jenkins 
<steven.jenkins@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Simon Wilkinson <simon@sxw.org.uk>
> wrote:
>>
>> On 26 Aug 2008, at 23:16, Buhrmaster, Gary wrote:
>>>
>>> There is no specific remedy for a tie in voting results
>>> (it *could* happen - arm wrestling anyone?)
>>
>> So, what would a suitable remedy for this be?
>>
>> Rerunning the election, in whatever form, is likely to be time consuming,
>> and probably result in a vanishingly small turnout the second time round.
>> Should we just give the outgoing chair a casting vote?
>>
>
> I don't have any good ideas, but of those of you with experience in
> other standards bodies, how are ties broken there?

One of the IETF's long-standing principles is this one:

      We reject kings, presidents and voting.
      We believe in rough consensus and running code.

                              -- Dave Clark (1992)


Part of what that means in practice is that we don't _have_ elections, so 
there is generally no need for tie-breakers.  If participants are about 
equally divided on a technical question, then consensus has not yet been 
reached.  Leadership is selected by a nominating committee (which itself is 
selected by a verifiable random process from among a pool of eligible 
volunteers).


I think as the current proposal was being written, we came to the 
conclusion that that level of complexity was not necessary here, and that 
both the group and the number of offices were small enough that a direct 
election is feasible.

-- Jeff