[Members] Proposal 2 - Tie resolution proposal

[Dave Cridland]

On Wed Oct  7 23:28:45 2009, Jack Moffitt wrote:
> PROPOSAL 2: Resolve membership election voting ties with a virtual  
> coin toss.
> 
>  Currently the bylaws do not give any guidance when several  
> candidates
> are tied for a position that only a subset of the candidates can  
> win.
> This needs to be addressed.
> 
>  This proposal would adopt the methods in RFC 3797 - publicly
> verifiable random selection. In essence, a source of randomness is
> publicly chosen, and an algorithm used to select randomly among the
> candidates.  This is the process used by the IETF, and we feel it
> would work well for the XSF as well.

I'd like to offer a counter-proposal, that the members can first try  
to resolve the tie by a vote within the meeting.

This was the most obvious course of action at the meeting on Tuesday,  
and the only reason we couldn't do it was because the bylaws didn't  
allow for it. (It'd also have the effect of increasing the numbers at  
these meetings, which is frankly no bad thing).

A virtual coin-toss is excellent for selection of NomCom members in  
the IETF precisely because there is no membership of the IETF to vote  
on such matters, so a selection of participants is made to do it. The  
IESG itself is absolutely not selected randomly.

Of course, if we have a tie in the members meeting whilst trying to  
resolve the tie, we'll have to resolve it via something, and random  
selection is probably as good as it gets. But I'm concerned to  
minimize the effects of random selection as much as possible.

> If PROPOSAL 1 is accepted, then Nicolas Verite would become the
> board's fourth member. No tie break procedure is needed for the 5th
> possible position as both of the other candidates have withdrawn. In
> expectation of this propsal passing, the board will invite Nicolas  
> to
> participate in board meetings, without a vote of his own, until the
> membership has decided the outcome.
> 
> 
Not quite - The Board may, under Section 4.7, appoint anyone it likes  
to the vacant position(s), but the membership has to create some  
first, by increasing the size of the Board under Section 4.4 rules.

Dave.
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