[rpd] Policy Proposal: PDP Working Group (WG) Guidelines and Procedures

[Owen DeLong]

> On Sep 1, 2020, at 11:33 AM, Noah <noah at neo.co.tz> wrote:

> 

> 

> 

> On Mon, 31 Aug 2020, 21:15 Owen DeLong, <owen at delong.com <mailto:owen at delong.com>> wrote:

> 

> However, ranked choice voting is a kind of mathematically forced consensus and quite different from consensus voting as practiced in RIPE working groups. If the authors wish to modify their proposal to suggest a ranked-choice voting ballot, then I would not have a problem with that aspect of the proposal. That’s not what the current language calls for.

> 

> Hi Owen

> 

> Actually the current language calls for vote by ranked-choice voting only when the consensus based approach can’t be achieved.

> 

> The proposed process takes into consideration the following;

> 

> 1. Allow all those who are present (physically and remote) to participate in the election by consensus.

> 

> 2. If consensus can’t be reached then allow voting with a secret ballot using ranked choice voting (IRV). 

> 

> 3. If it becomes impossible to hold secret ballot in step 2 above, then the seat is declared vacant and the board chair appoints an interim cochair.

> 

> The expectation is that the first option ( consensus based ) suffices most of the time since voting  is to be avoided as much as possible in the context of the PDWG.


The problem with this approach is that you are now making the election subjective because you are depending on a single person to decide whether consensus exists or not.

Based on my observations of past elections in the AFRINIC region, I believe this approach to be highly dysfunctional in the context of the AFRINC region and so I oppose the policy proposal as written.

Take out the consensus and go straight to ranked choice voting, and you have a policy proposal which might be viable for the AFRINIC region, though I’m not wild about step 3 as my willingness to trust the chair of the AFRINIC board to appoint a co-chair in the event that a secret ballot can be prevented is a limited and I see this as a potential attack vector on the process.

IMHO, the fallback if a secret ballot cannot be accomplished should be a return to the show of hands (or on-line equivalent).


> The spirit of volunteerism with an objective to serve the working group by those who aspire to be cochairs should be the goal above competitive elections which in most cases are subjective since personal interest supersedes collective community interest.


That’s a lofty ideal, but reality in this region is that allowing subjective judgement of consensus in the appointment of a co-chair will not achieve that outcome and is more likely to lead to further fractious and contentious arguments over each and every step of the election process.

In a community that can’t even accomplish a show of hands without having to re-engineer the process at each and every meeting due to objections from the floor, I have difficulty believing that widespread consensus will magically appear to replace that process just because we say it should.

Owen

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