On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 01:54:30PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > > As long as there is no clear and unambiguous violation of the constitution in > > the Secretary's actions, > > As a matter of fact, there's that too. This ballot has been assembled in > contravention of the Standard Resolution Procedure, which requires that new > ballot options be proposed as formal *amendments* to an outstanding GR > proposal in order to appear on the same ballot. That's certainly a valid interpretation of the constitution (and one could make an excellent case for it). However, it is not the only possible (and reasonable) one, hence it's not an unambiguous violation - it is within the Secretary's power to reject that interpretation in favor of an alternative. One alternative (and not, in my opinion, frivolous) interpretation can be derived from the fact that the Constitution requires that amendments "may be made formal by being proposed and sponsored according to the requirements for a new resolution", which arguably could mean that an amendment need not be called an amendment by its proposer. > > and absent a valid GR stating otherwise, the vote must be presumed to be > > constitutionally valid. > > Ah, and how are we meant to get a valid GR when the secretary is actively > tampering with the GR process? Are you speaking hypothetically, or have you actually tried to get a "that was not a valid GR" GR past the Secretary? If the latter, I must apologise, for I have missed it. (Incidentally, I think it is clear that we are operating under different definitions of "valid GR". Mine is rather formal - as long as the Secretary does not blatantly[*] disregard the Constitution, any vote the Secretary conducts is valid.) > Recognizing the validity of the vote is not a "must". The alternative is > that we end up in a state of constitutional crisis. Well, true. I was hoping nobody else had noticed, and I didn't want to give anybody ideas :) I would be strongly disappointed if we did arrive at a constitutional crisis. Among other things, and depending on the events that lead up to it, it would be one more reason for me to reconsider my membership in this project. [*] "Blatant" would require, in my eyes, that there is no reasonable interpretation of the Secretary's actions that would render them constitutional. So far, I haven't noticed anything like that. -- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature