Re: Re: Should the NomCom rules define CB voting behavior

[Michael StJohns <mstjohns@mindspring.com>]

At 08:53 AM 4/2/2003 +0200, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:


> --On tirsdag, april 01, 2003 13:57:36 -0500 Michael StJohns 
> <mstjohns@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> > I also am more than adamantly opposed to any underspecification of the
> > process which can lead to the PROCESS not completing.
> Michael,
>
> I don't believe your proposed amendment, or the current language in the 
> document, fixes this problem.
> Both cases speak to a required majority to confirm; they don't speak to 
> anything about how the CB decides that it has decided.

*wag hand*  In practice, if the only criteria is positive affirmation 
rather than the current IAB rules, one interpretation is that if a majority 
agree to confirmation then the candidate is confirmed.  Granted, it would 
be useful to set a timeout, but that's already in the document that the CB 
must complete its deliberations within a particular time.

> If someone is seriously filibustering the CB's decision, there are lots of 
> ways to do that under almost *any* set of rules.

Yes, but almost any set of rules has a mechanism for setting a time for a 
vote, or for forcing a vote.  The current IAB rules allow a permanent 
"discuss".

> The brutal mechanism that would fix this problem is specifying what 
> happens at timeout - in this case, "deadlock = confirmation" - that a CB 
> that did not return a rejection notice within the deadline is assumed to 
> have confirmed the slate.

Going back to other discussions, its probably a bad idea to have the 
default that the slate is confirmed. I really think that no one should be 
confirmed absent at least a majority of the CB deciding they should be 
confirmed.

> While I think of that as a mechanism of last resort, I think it's actually 
> structurally better than having the nomcom specify rules for the 
> confirming bodies' consensus processing.
>
> (The question of whether the IAB should document its rules for deciding on 
> a nomcom slate is a separate matter - I think it should)
>
>                     Harald