Geoff,
Situation two that you describe seems to
be an issue for at least three Working Groups, so that is a real issue. As far
as using roll call votes as a tool to slow down work, I believe they are a
singularly ineffective way of trying to accomplish that. A roll call vote, when
requested or ordered, only delays the work by the amount of time it takes to call
the roll. The roll-call can actually be done quite efficiently. If used frivolously,
a roll-call would generate considerable ill-will for very little gain. There
are many more effective ways, including ones using Robert's Rules that
can be used to delay work. Also on technical issues a 25% minority can halt
progress by simply voting no. Also the assumption underlying the statement that
roll-call votes would be used to delay work is based on an assumption that the
majority is voting for progress. In actuality the majority may be the side that
is voting against progressing the
work or against an efficient work structure, so that if that is caused by strategic
voting, a roll call would actually accelerate progress. So as a delaying tool,
roll-call votes are useless and in some cases may actually accelerate work by
discouraging strategic voting.
I also believe, and I believe experience
in 802.17 bears this out, that the availability of roll-call votes as a tool by
the committee members effectively enforces the IEEE voting and merely its
availability will discourage inappropriate voting.
Mark Klerer
-----Original Message-----
From:
owner-stds-802-sec@majordomo.ieee.org
[mailto:owner-stds-802-sec@majordomo.ieee.org] On Behalf Of Geoff Thompson
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003
4:20 PM
To: Mike Takefman
Cc: stds-802-sec@ieee.org
Subject: Re: [802SEC] +++EC
Motion+++ Rules Change Ballot on Roll Call Votes
Mike-
(DISAPPROVE at this point)
I applaud your attempts to fix this. I am not sure that it is a tractable
problem for reasons that I will outline below.
But first the trivial fix:
Change from:
A roll call vote can be held at the discretion of the
chair.
Change to:
A roll call vote may be held at the discretion of the
chair.
And you need to add that a motion and a second is
needed to call for a roll call
(and, I would hope that the vote could not be by acclamation)
But further than that, I'm not wild about your test criteria.
I believe that the problem in the Exec is that a roll call represents two
different situations.
Situation #1
Occurs in fairly large groups without voting tokens.
Occasional problems arise when non-voters participate in a vote.
There are two remedies to this situation
a) A caution
from the WG Chair and a re-vote.
b) A roll call
vote
Requests for a roll call vote from the floor have traditionally been honored.
Requests for a roll call vote have been very infrequent.
Situation #2
(This is somewhat speculative since I am not in these groups. I welcome
supplemental or corrective information)
Occurs in groups with voting tokens
These groups have less of a problem with non-voters voting.
There are situations where there are strategic voting issues with voting in a
secret ballot vs a "public" roll call vote.
A request for a roll-call vote can be used in this situation to slow things
down or to force members to vote "on the record".
My feeling is that we need to (1) recognize these differences and (2) come up
with a solution that harmonizes or clearly differentiates these 2 situations
rather than trying to lump them into the same pot.
At this point I don't have a particular idea on how to do that, but I believe
that is the place to start.
At 11:33 PM 11/24/2003 -0500, Mike Takefman wrote:
Dear EC Members,
as per the motion at the November Plenary closing
EC meeting I am starting a (35 day) ballot on
the proposed rule change. I am extending the ballot
to account for the upcoming US Thanksgiving holiday
(and yes Canada has such a holiday - its just a month
earlier).
I will be running a face to face comment resolution session
during the January Interim Session to try to finalize
the language. I believe sunday night is the best time
to hold such a meeting, but I am open to other suggestions.
The language you will find enclosed is different (and
I believe improved) from what was shown at the EC meeting.
1) It attempts to provide better sentence structure
(less of a run-on sentence).
2) It addresses an issue brought up to me personally
by one of the 2 dissenting voters to the rules change
motion in terms of insuring that roll call votes cannot
be used as a delaying tactic.
Personally, I have only seen roll call votes used in dot17
sparingly and they have in fact helped me determine when a group
was attempting to block concensus / progress. As such, there
has never been an issue with their use as a delay tactic,
but I do have sympathy for such a concern.
cheers,
mike
--
Michael
Takefman
tak@cisco.com
Distinguished Engineer, Cisco Systems
Chair IEEE 802.17 Stds WG
3000 Innovation Dr, Ottawa, Canada, K2K 3E8
voice: 613-254-3399 cell:613-220-6991