Re: Secret Ballots: Handling Disagreement with the Secretary
On Fri, 04 Feb 2022, Sam Hartman wrote:
> I see two ways of reading section 4.1.7:
>
> 1) If the DPL and secretary disagree on any issue then the project can
> replace the secretary.
>
> 2) If the DPL and secretary disagree on the only issue where the two
> of them both get to have an opinion (namely who is the next
> secretary), the project decides.
>
> So it's not clear to me that section 4.1.7 allows the secretary to be
> replaced out of cycle. If we had a big conflict with the secretary,
> I'd obviously argue for interpretation 1, but that aspect of the
> constitution is not so clear to me.
I think the plainest reading is #1, but I can see the argument that #2
was the intention.
> Don> If we add this, the intersection of §4.1.8 and §4.1.7 should be
> Don> addressed when it comes to questions requiring a supermajority.
>
> I don't understand what you mean here. Are you worried that the
> project might replace the secretary with a 1:1 majority to get around
> a determination that some ballot option required a 3:1 majority?
Yes. I think the additional complexity of requiring a 3:1 majority to
overrule the secretary isn't enough to always have the desired effect if
§4.1.7 isn't also modified accordingly.
That said, if a majority uses the blunt force of §4.1.7 to try to get
its way by removing people, I'd be more concerned about the health of
the project than whether we had written rules to prevent it.
--
Don Armstrong https://www.donarmstrong.com
Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the
rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct
these defects".
-- Mark Twain _A Horse's Tail_
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