Gentoo Archives: gentoo-council

From: Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o>
To: gentoo-council@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-council] Voting procedure
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:04:07
Message-Id: 1231592642.3886.0@spike
In Reply to: [gentoo-council] Voting procedure by "Tiziano Müller"
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4 On 2009.01.08 13:01, Tiziano Müller wrote:
5 > Hi everyone
6 >
7 > Since Cardoe didn't present the paper up to now, I'd like to get the
8 > discussion started how the voting procedure should look like in the
9 > future.
10 >
11 > So far we've introduced the _reopen_nominations person in the last
12 > vote
13 > and it didn't change a lot. But there are more questions:
14 >
15 > Does there always have to be 7 council members? If yes, what should
16 > happen when we i) don't have enough nominations and/or ii)
17 > _reopen_nominations is ranked somewhere between rank 1-7 ?
18 > If not, should there be a minimum? If yes, same questions as above.
19 >
20 > I know it's boring stuff but it's better to discuss it now instead of
21 > during the next election period.
22 >
23 > Cheers,
24 > Tiziano
25 >
26 > ps The results from the 2008b vote are still not on the council page,
27 > who's going to do that?
28 >
29 > --
30 > -------------------------------------------------------
31 > Tiziano Müller
32 > Gentoo Linux Developer
33 > Areas of responsibility:
34 > Samba, PostgreSQL, CPP, Python, sysadmin
35 > E-Mail : dev-zero@g.o
36 > GnuPG FP : F327 283A E769 2E36 18D5 4DE2 1B05 6A63 AE9C 1E30
37 >
38 Tiziano,
39
40 I would like to widen the discussion a little.
41 I propose that council members serve for two years, not the current
42 year and that half the seats are contested every year.
43
44 This helps ensure a smooth transition from one council to the next and
45 avoids the case where a council near the end of its term decides to
46 'leave it for the new council' and the new council takes a few months
47 to find its feet. We have seen both cases already.
48
49 Council can debate/vote on that any time, or even decide to hold a
50 referendum.
51
52 To answer your questions directly, I'm not happy with the 'fake person'
53 A democracy gets the leadership it deserves, if there are seven
54 vacanices and only seven candidates, they should be elected unopposed.
55 No vote required.
56
57 We could make voting compulsory but that would make a lot of work for
58 election offcials, chasing slackers. It would force developers to
59 register their apathy by submitting a valid ballot with all names
60 ranked equally. The 'none of the below' option can force a continuious
61 cycle of nominations/elections unless we drop the 'none of the below'
62 from any second attempt, then its clearly served no useful purpose.
63
64 The trustees are currently running with one vacancy and one appointee.
65 An odd number works best and the appointee serves only until the next
66 planned election. I'm really suggesting that council looks at what
67 the Foundation does. I'm not saying its perfect but there may be some
68 ideas there.
69
70 The Foundation trustees cannot have proxies as trustees are legally
71 responsible for the runing of a legal entity, as directors of a company
72 and slacker marks make no sense to the trustees either.
73
74 I find the idea of proxies undemocratic. They are in effect a councilor
75 appointed for a short period by a single councilor. Thats not very
76 democratic now is it?
77
78 What whould happen if a council meeting was composed of seven proxies,
79 is it still representative of the council?
80
81 My view is that the coucil is overly cautions about its democratic
82 practices, sometimes to its detriment and at other times (proxies) the
83 processes are not democratic at all.
84
85 Disclaimer: The views above are my own. They do not represent the
86 formal position of any project I may be a member of.
87
88 - --
89 Regards,
90
91 Roy Bamford
92 (NeddySeagoon) a member of
93 gentoo-ops
94 forum-mods
95 treecleaners
96 trustees
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Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-council] Voting procedure Ned Ludd <solar@g.o>
Re: [gentoo-council] Voting procedure Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@g.o>