Re: [802SEC] Chair re-election - proposed interpretation/rules change
Tony/Colleagues-
I agree with Tony that the language needs to be tightened up.
While I hesitate to have "special" voting rules instead of just referring
to one of our existing procedures, I believe there is a fatal flaw in what
Tony has proposed.
Our original intention was to have term limits be the default situation.
The 75% vote was intended to allow things to be overridden by a highly
affirmative action (a principle which I support). I believe Tony's proposal
waters that down significantly in its current proposed form.
The problem of 75% of Y/(Y+N) is that those not voting are weight in the
affirmative. In this particular case (a) the bias is in the opposite of our
alleged default and (b) it takes a lot of courage to stick your hand up to
say you hate the current chair (hard enough to brash American, effectively
impossible for some other cultures).
Therefore, I propose that the method of vote should be (from Tony's list
below):
> - 75% of the voting membership that are present in the room.
I acknowledge that does not solve the problem completely, voters can still
abstain by leaving the room. This could be solved (perhaps) by instead using:
> - 75% of the voting membership of the WG (whether in the room or not).
There is a problem with too though. Many (most?) WGs don't have anything
near 100% of the voting members show up at a plenary. This effectively
raises the bar significantly (too far in my opinion). We could use 50% of
the voting membership on a vote taken at the plenary but that has a
potential unevenness problem between WGs.
Therefore, my choice remains:
> - 75% of the voting membership that are present in the room.
Appropriate fruit for discussion during a P&P meeting
Best regards,
Geoff
At 05:34 AM 11/8/2007 , Tony Jeffree wrote:
Following the interesting discussion on the email exploder on this topic, I
decided to take a shot at hacking the P&P text into something rather more
watertight and hopefully rather closer to what we intended to say in the
first place. As with all of these things, the closer you look at the
existing text the more problems come out of the woodwork. So in addition to
the initial problem of interpreting the number of years vs number of terms
of office ambiguity, I came across the following problems:
1) Although the existing text specifies when terms of office come to an
end, it only indirectly specifies what happens next.
2) The wording around the 10-year rule is sufficiently ambiguous that it
could be interpreted as requiring someone that has spent 10 years as Vice
Chair to undergo the 75% vote before standing for Chair (and vice versa). I
know Bob Grow disagrees with me on this interpretation, but suffice it to
say that if I wrote something similar in a draft standard I would expect to
get comments requiring the ambiguity to be removed.
3) The text doesn't make it clear what question the WG should vote on in
cases where the 75% approval is required. I.e., it says that something
needs to be approved by 75%, but not what that something is.
4) (this is probably the worst of the lot, and in my view, makes it
essential that we have a clear interpretation next week) The wording around
the 75% vote does not specify what "a 75% vote of the WG" means. Hence, it
is open to at least the following interpretations, some of which might be
terribly difficult to achieve:
- 75% of the people in the room (members and observers).
- 75% of the participants in the WG (voting members and observers, whether
in the room or not).
- 75% of the voting membership of the WG (whether in the room or not).
- 75% of the voting membership that are present in the room.
- Same as a technical vote (75% of those voting members voting Approve and
Disapprove).
- Impossible to determine, as a WG is a single entity, so a 75% of it isn't
a meaningful concept.
- Some other interpretation that I haven't thought of.
I have attached a marked-up version of the relevant sections that I believe
fixes the problems that I have identified. My intention would be to use
this as the basis for a rules change ballot.
Regards,
Tony
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