RE: [ga] Voting rules, take 4

["Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@netsol.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand [mailto:Harald@Alvestrand.no]
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2000 2:44 AM
To: Gomes, Chuck; ga@dnso.org
Subject: RE: [ga] Voting rules, take 4


At 07:35 20.06.2000 -0400, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
>A few comments:
>
>1. It seems like one week may be a little short for the amount of time to
>vote.  If someone is away from email for a week, they miss the vote.  A
>couple weeks would seem more reasonable especially in an international
>setting.  It doesn't seem necessary to rush this.  Also, two weeks would
>allow more time to deal with email glitches that might delay mail delivery.

It's a compromise - a month would give assurance that everyone got at least
3 chances to vote, but makes the GA unresponsive to demands for a timely 
opinion; a (working) day might be better in order to get business
transacted quickly - some have argued for the "vote early, vote often" 
school of discussion, where almost every decision, including the decision 
to have a decision, would be put to the vote.

I would agree that a month is too long.  Two weeks seemed like a reasonable
compromise.

>2. Reasonable advance notice of upcoming votes should be given; a minimum
of
>two weeks advance notice would probably work.  Advance notice could simply
>involve an estimated time when a vote is anticipated because the exact date
>when the ballot will be approved may not be known far enough ahead of time.
>For example, a notice could say something like this: "A vote regarding GA
>opinion regarding Names Council proposal A is anticipated in two to three
>weeks from the date of this message."

Yes - the current vote was announced in February to be held in late April.
Quite a bit of advance notice there :-(
But the length of "reasonable warning" may vary from topic to topic - does 
this have to be in the rules?

Why not have it in thre rules? That would prevent rushing a vote through and
thereby giving some participants less chance to participate.

>3. Because the DNSO is supposed to be a consensus-building organization, I
>would consider modifying the third rule as follows: "In the case of a
choice
>between multiple alternatives, the alternative with the most votes over 50%
>of those cast wins.  If no choice receives more than 50%, there is no
>winner."

I don't have a strong opinion here. In the case of a 3-way vote with a 
49/25/24% outcome, it seems like extra bureaucracy, but in the case of a 
34/33/33% outcome, it may be the Right Thing to do.
Others?

49% is not consensus by most standards.

>4. I think rule 4 should be worded like this: "In the case of selecting N
>candidates from a slate of M, with M > N, the N top candidates win."  In
>other words, when selecting 4 candidates from a slate of 10, the top 4 win.
>An important question to answer in this type of situation is this: "How
many
>votes does each member get and can they use all their votes for one
>candidate?"

After the latest discussion, I suggest rule 4 to be worded:
"This rule set deals only with single-winner votes."
Then we add rules for multiple-winner votes after finishing discussions on 
them.

My point here was that there appeared to be an error.  Your previous wording
had "with N > M" which does not seem to make make sense.  It should be "with
M > N."  I did not have any problem with the basic concept.

Thanks for your comments!

                 Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@edb.maxware.no

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