[AFS3-std] Re: Suggestion for changing the voting process after bootstrapping

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

--On Wednesday, October 20, 2010 06:16:01 PM -0400 Tom Keiser 
<tkeiser@sinenomine.net> wrote:

> Agreed.  We can easily fall into the single vote-taker situation when,
> for example, an the outgoing incumbent is nominated for re-election,
> or a chair vacates their seat during the election.  While I think I
> can trust everyone involved, the mere appearance of impropriety could
> put a cloud over the standards process.  A two-out-of-three
> requirement seems like a good balance of redundancy and verification.

I'm mostly a proponent of defining a limited amount of process, with as 
much in public as possible, selecting good leaders, trusting them to do 
their jobs, and cleaning up later if/when there is a problem.  I've seen 
organizations of various sorts (including one decent-sized SDO) try too 
hard to cover every case in process and over-micro-manage their leadership, 
and it doesn't work as well.

However, elections are an interesting case, because we seem to desire a 
secret ballot.  Secrecy makes it impossible for anyone who doesn't have 
access to the votes to verify the results, which makes it difficult to 
discover not only fraud but honest mistakes.  It also presents a redundancy 
problem; if only one person has the votes and that person disappears....

> I'll propose the following:
>
>    In normal operation, there will be three vote-takers.  By default, both
>    standardisation group chairs and one AFS assigned numbers
>    registrar--to be chosen at the discretion of the registrars--shall
> serve    as vote-takers.  If anyone serving as a vote-taker is nominated
> and    seconded for election, then they must either recuse themselves
> from the vote-taking process, or reject the nomination.  Whenever
> vote-taking vacancies occur, the order of succession shall be: eligible
> registrars, followed by nomination of any eligible person by the
> remaining vote-taker(s).  Vote-takers who are also eligible voters may
> vote in the same manner as any other voter.

I'm not sure how I feel about putting the registrars in this role 
permanently.  Not that I'm opposed to serving in that role, if needed, but 
I'm not sure whether or to what extent we care about maintaining 
separation.  That's something the community will have to decide.

> I'm not entirely happy with the above: e.g. if multiple vote-takers
> are nominated and seconded quasi-simultaneously, we can end up in a
> position where we have one (or even zero) vote-takers

It should be very rare to have zero vote-takers, as a continuing chair 
cannot meaningfully stand for election and a chair who has just resigned 
presumably won't want to.  If you do end up with no vote-takers and no 
eligible registrars, the process of selecting new vote-takers can be done 
in public, with no coordinator -- someone says "hey we need vote-takers" 
and people start nominating; anyone who is nominated, seconded, and doesn't 
decline becomes a vote-taker.  If there are many more nominations than 
needed, some will probably decline.

> ; should a
> vote-taker be nominated, it doesn't stipulate how long they have to
> reach a decision; etc.

Nominations need to be accepted or not before the call for votes can go 
out, and the vote-takers don't have to be fixed until then.  So, I don't 
think there's a problem here.

> I guess the key question is: how many corner
> cases should the text cover?

Not too many.  We do need to cover how to recover from a lack of leaders, 
but as long as we have chairs and vote-takers, we can let them apply 
judgement to corner cases.

-- Jeff