Re: Draft proposal for resolution process changes
Karsten Merker <merker@debian.org> writes:
> Am Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 06:51:05PM -0700 schrieb Russ Allbery:
>> 7. [...] There is no casting vote. If there are multiple options with no
>> defeats in the Schwartz set at the end of A.6.8, the winner will be
>> chosen from those options by lot, via a mechanism chosen by the Project
>> Secretary.
> What ist the meaning of the term "chosen by lot"? My dictionary
> doesn't explain the expression in the context of a vote but only
> in the context of a piece of land, which doesn't make sense here.
Apologies, it's a term of art in voting system discussion in English, but
it's unfriendly to people not familiar with that. I've changed this to
"the winner will be randomly chosen from those options."
>> When the Technical Committee votes whether to override a Developer
>> who also happens to be a member of the Committee, that member may
>> not vote (unless they are the Chair, in which case they may use only
>> their casting vote).
> What is the reason for having a special rule for the chair compared to
> the other members of the TC in case of having to abstain from the vote?
I went into this a bit more in a different message just now, but the short
answer is that a voting system should always have a well-defined outcome
or some other process to handle cases where there are multiple winners but
there can only be one winner.
>> 2. Details regarding voting.
>>
>> Votes are decided by the voting counting mechanism described in A.6.
>> The voting period lasts for one week or until the outcome is no longer
>> in doubt, whichever is shorter. Members may change their votes.
> How can be determined that the outcome is no longer in doubt before the
> voting period ends if members can change their vote at any point in time
> until the end of the voting period?
Yeah, this wording bugs me too. It's pre-existing and I didn't try to fix
it, but we probably should. The simplest fix (including a typo fix for
the first line) would be:
Votes are decided by the vote counting mechanism described in A.6.
The voting period lasts for one week or until the outcome is no longer
in doubt assuming no members change their votes, whichever is shorter.
Members may change their votes until the voting period ends.
It's still a bit awkward. Better phrasing is welcome. I'm not sure I see
a better fix; we do want members to be able to change their votes, but we
don't want every vote to have to take a full week.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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