Re: Amendment to: reduce the length of DPL election process

[Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.iki.fi>]

On to, 2007-08-09 at 10:25 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.iki.fi> wrote:
> > I, as a voter, would also like to have ample time for discussion
> about
> > various topics after the IRC debate. [...] a week for discussion
> > really does sound to me like too little time.
> 
> Note that there could still be up to three weeks for discussion after
> the IRC debate but before voting closes.

Or possibly only two weeks, if aj's proposal to shorten it goes through,
as well. And that's still assuming our IRC debate happens right at the
beginning of the one week campaining period, when people still haven't
come up with good questions to candidates, or issues and themes to
discuss. To me, that is a bad way of dealing with an important
discussion.

Our voting period is long to deal with the fact that we are an
international organization of people with wildly varying demands on our
time. Otherwise, we could make the voting period be only one day, but
that would exclude people on vacation, work trips, ill, or otherwise
unable to attend to Debian things during that day. That would exclude
too many people, or require us to set up an absentee ballot system, and
a long voting period is so much simpler.

I think shortening the voting period to two weeks won't exclude very
many people. If it does, we should hopefully hear about them soon,
before we vote on aj's amendment, in which case I expect we'll be able
to vote for the shortening of the nomination period separately.

Replacing part of the campaining period with the voting period is again
bad for people who can't follow Debian full time. aj's proposal shortens
the time people have to discuss things with candidates from six weeks to
five; you would shorten it to three. To me, that is too short.

I am also uncomfortable with the assumption that the vigorous discussion
we often have during the campainig period would continue throughout the
voting period. While I don't endorse a full ban on discussion during the
voting period, unless we shorten the voting period to one or two days,
courtesy if nothing else has kept the voting period mostly free of
discussion during the past elections.

If the voluminous discussion continues through the voting period, that
effectively does reduce the useful voting period to just a day or two.
Otherwise you can't vote early without missing the discussion, and
voting while ignoring most of the discussion is a bad idea, I think.

-- 
Communication via acronyms is rfs.