Re: [wg-d] More Robert's Rules: Streamlining Voting

["Mark C. Langston" <skritch@home.com>]

On 12 August 1999, John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com> wrote:


>
>> This leaves the door open to the possibility that the only person 
>> left with the ability to challenge the consensus isn't able to 
>> respond.  In this instance, the number of challenges each person
>> received was too low.  We'd have to be careful to ensure that
>> one side cannot trick another into depleting the challenges of 
>> every opponent in order to railroad a proposition.
>
>I would think that if each person has X tickets to voice a challenge to a
>consensus, then it is considered that he has "burnt" a ticket if he is the
>only challenger. If Y persons challenge, then even if they hold a minority
>position, and they would lose the vote, and consensus would be established
>as being the view that they had objected to, the truth is that there *was* a
>valid reason for them to challenge (even if tit wasn't strong enough for
>their challenge to prevail), and they shouldn't be penalized for this.
>
>We want to stop individuals from being able to railroad the process by
>challenging EVEYTHING, not block people from being able to question the
>process when valid reasons exist.

So, to make sure I'm understanding what you're saying:

If someone objects to an official call of consensus, and nobody else
speaks up in support of the objection, the person who objected has 
burned one of their "tickets".  

If one or more people do speak up (I'd prefer it be more than one,
personally), then none of the objectors burn a ticket.


>
>Problems: If a group decides that it wants to railroad the process then it
>can agree to back each others challenge each and every time, so as not to
>"burn" their stopping rights. However, if they had decided to agree amongst
>themselves anyway, their power to be able to object to EVERYTHING anyway was
>still large, as they'd have Y times X tickets to play with (and remember
>that they are coordinating) [Y = amount of people belonging to this
>disruptive group, X = amount of tickets each player had to start with].
>
>It won't stop people from dissenting that consensus exists when there is a
>valid reason to think this:
>
>If he is correct that consensus doesn't exist, and he perceives it as such,
>then it is obvious that he is not the SINGLE person with that opinion (or he
>would see straight away that he is a small minority), so he will get backing
>to his objection.
>
>If he is the only objector, then he deserves to burn a ticket because it is
>obvious that he is just stalling.
>
>Yours, John Broomfield.

I see your point, but I'm not sure I agree with it.  In the interest of
progress, there should always be a cost to this sort of action.

What if we stuck with the original plan (first/only objector always
burns a "ticket"), but add the ability of the entire body to vote into
existence more tickets per person (such a vote would require some 
difficult number to achieve, e.g., 4/5ths or 7/8ths majority).

There still exists the possibility that there would be blind majority
rule in this scheme.  But I also still believe it offers some interesting
dynamics while keeping the process moving along.

-- 
Mark C. Langston	     			Let your voice be heard:
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