Re: Ending votes early
On Mon, 12 May 2003 19:44:48 -0400, Raul Miller <moth@magenta.com> said:
> On Mon, May 12, 2003 at 05:52:17PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> After re-reading the draft (prompted by Branden on IRC), I think I
>> don't know how to define "when the vote is no longer in doubt",
>> since people can always revote.
> Clearly the idea doesn't make sense if everybody changes their vote.
>> At what point of time could the vote have been closed and had the
>> same results as the actual vote?
> I've always taken it to mean "ignoring the slight possibility that
> people who have voted didn't mean what they said".
I am not sure that the possibility is slight, really.
>> I suggest we strike the clause about the secretary's ability to end
>> votes early.
> The thing I don't like about this is that it doesn't allow for quick
> resolution making when everybody does, in fact, agree. Maybe not an
> issue for general resolutions, but maybe significant for smaller
> groups like the technical committee.
Certainly this should not happen for general resolution, or
for DPL elections. That takes care of all the secret balloting, and
since most of the votes are not secret, I think the use case for
ending the vote early loses, since the group can decide to take
action based on the current status if they are sure. Why should the
decision lie with the secretary, and not the customers fo the voting
mechanism?
For smaller groups, I would rather have a smaller
window for counting votes, rahter than give the secretary the power
to close off the polls.
> Since we should recognize that a small number of people might want
> to change their votes, I'd recommend "when the vote would no longer
> be in doubt if no more than quorum voters change their current
> ballots."
What are the use cases for pushing for an early resolution?
Have we ever been in a situation where a early decision was critical?
BTW, people did revote on the last day of the DPL elections,
and the narrowest victory was in single digit votes, ( 4 beats
2: 228 224 = 4 ). A voter would not have known a pariori whether the
vote was close or not -- and this does add pressure to vote early,
since your franchise would be worthless unless you got in early.
Also, I don't like this kind of power being added to the
secretaries position.
> When most everyone agrees, do we really need to make everyone wait
> for a decision because of the vanishingly small chance that everyone
> voted what they didn't want?
I think that the facility that one can, with equanimity, chose
to change ones vote even until the last moment, is more important
than truncating the voting period.
I would say if there is an expectation of near consensus,
chose a smaller period, or start acting on the decision when you are
sure, if you are in a hurry.
manoj
--
Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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