Re: Draft proposal for resolution process changes
Am Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 01:08:01PM -0700 schrieb Russ Allbery:
> Karsten Merker <merker@debian.org> writes:
>
> > "Votes are decided by the vote counting mechanism described in A.6. By
> > default, the voting period lasts for one week. Members may change their
> > votes during the voting period. The TC can - even after the voting
> > period has started - declare the voting period to end earlier if all
> > members of the TC agree to that."
>
> This allows any member of the TC to force the voting period to take a week
> even if they're a minority of one. Maybe it doesn't matter that much
> because a week isn't very long, but this still doesn't seem correct (and
> isn't the current practice). Or, less controversially and more commonly,
> it means that if one TC member is unavailable for some reason, all votes
> are forced to be a week long because they're not available to agree to
> make it shorter.
>
> I don't recall the "when the outcome is no longer in doubt" provision
> having been a problem in the past, so I admit my bias is towards fixing
> the wording but maintaining the current process. I'm not sure there's a
> need for a change.
Hello,
I agree insofar that I'm not aware of a past case where the use
of the "when the outcome is no longer in doubt" provision has
actually caused trouble, that one can with good reason argue that
it has worked reasonably well in practice as is and that abuse is
relatively unlikely.
On the other hand I see two issues in the current provision as a
matter of principle:
a) The constitution explicitly allows changing a vote during the
voting period, so there is the possibility of convincing
another member to change their already cast vote before the
voting period ends. From a formal point of view this means
that there is no way to determine "if the outcome is no longer
in doubt" before the regular voting period has ended, unless
each member has declared that they will not change their vote
anymore (which is equivalent to the process in my phrasing
proposal above).
b) The second concern that I have with the "majority party" (for
lack of a better term) being able to shorten the voting period
without consent from the other members is that it under
certain circumstances allows removing the ability of other
members to cast a dissenting vote with the argument "it
wouldn't make a difference anyway".
This could happen if a "dissenter" can cast their vote within
the regular one-week period but not directly at the beginning
and the voting period gets declared closed after a day or two
because "further votes wouldn't make a difference".
Having the non-winning votes represented in the result is a
basic element of democracy and is important for assessing the
result. For example if somebody is pondering over starting a
GR after a TC decision it can make quite a bit of a difference
whether the decision has been taken unanimously or whether it
has been nearly a 50:50 decision.
The aforementioned concerns are in practice only relevant in
corner cases and one can surely have different opinions about
whether they justify changing the corresponding part of the
constitution, but I at least wanted to point out why I'm not
really happy with the current wording even though it has worked
quite well in practice.
Regards,
Karsten
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