[council] Rules for Convention-Style Voting

["Andrew McLaughlin" <mclaughlin@pobox.com>]

To the Names Council:

As promised, here is a rough outline of the rules that would govern a
convention-style voting procedure.


I.  BASIC RULES

     1.  The list of Director nominees is presented to the NC.
     2.  Each NC member votes for one nominee.
     3.  The nominees are ranked by the number of votes received, and the NC
is informed of the result.
     4.  The lowest vote-getting nominee is eliminated from the list.  [For
the first round, all nominees receiving zero votes *and* the lowest
vote-getting nominee are eliminated from the list.]
     5.  The procedure is repeated with the new (reduced) list.
     6.  A winner is declared when a nominee receives 10 or more of the NC's
19 votes.

The first seat to be filled will be the 3-year seat;  then the 2-year seat;
then the 1-year seat.

In order to reduce the number of rounds of voting, the NC might eliminate
the *two* lowest vote-getting nominees after each round (until such time as
three nominees remain, at which point the *one* lowest vote-getting nominee
is eliminated).


II.  VARIATIONS BY VOTING MEDIUM


BY TELEPHONE

To conduct a convention-style election by phone:

     - the secretariat emails a ballot (list of nominees) to the NC members
for reference;
     - the secretariat of the NC calls the roll for each round (rotating the
list so that NC members are called in a different, random sequence for each
round)
     - each NC member states his/her vote when called;
     - the secretariat tallies and announces the results;
     - the secretariat determines and announces which name(s) to eliminate;
     - the process is repeated until one nominee gets 10 or more votes.

Under this scenario, the NC members will be aware of each others' votes.
The call could, but need not, be webcast.

One option would be to conduct the votes for the three Director seats on
three different days, to break a single, long teleconference into smaller
sessions and to allow the NC members to discuss, reflect and consult between
the teleconferences.  The teleconferences could be scheduled on three
consecutive days, or on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday sequence.


BY EMAIL

To conduct a convention-style election by email:

     - the secretariat emails a ballot to each NC member, along with a
deadline for the ballot to be received;
     - each NC member emails his/her vote back to the secretariat;
     - the secretariat tallies the votes and prepares a new (reduced) list
of nominees;
     - emails the results and the new ballot to the NC, with the deadline
for the next ballot to be received.

The disadvantage of this method is that it will be time-consuming and at
least some NC members will likely miss the deadline for at least some rounds
of voting.  At least 24 hours will be required for each round, unless the NC
members agree in advance to check their email (for example) every 8 hours
over the course of a 3-day period.


BY TELEPHONE AND EMAIL

To conduct a convention-style election by telephone and email, the NC uses
the rules for a telephone election (above), but NC members send their votes
to the DNSO secretariat in real time by email.  This allows for secret
voting, but may actually lengthen the teleconference due to (i) the
unreliability of email transmission, and (ii) the time required for the
secretariat to read the emails and tally the votes.


BY ONLINE VOTING INTERFACE

Don mentioned the possibility of a specially designed online voting
interface.  Perhaps he could post some details.



[The above is a rough outline.  I'll be happy to elaborate or modify based
on comments from the NC.]


--Andrew