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Re: Consensus? #746 Section 3.4 - IAOC decision making

2004-12-22 13:28:30


--On Wednesday, 22 December, 2004 09:25 -0500 Scott Bradner
<sob(_at_)harvard(_dot_)edu> wrote:


Brian suggested:
   Just another thought on this. Perhaps there is a formulation
   something like

   IAOC decisions are taken by a majority of the
non-conflicted IAOC    members who are available to vote in
person, by teleconference, or    by email.

this would deal with my issue - thanks Brian

It doesn't quite work for me, partially because the problem that
a few others have raised bothers me.  I've been in situations in
which the number of people who have to recuse themselves, plus
the number of people who are inaccessible, gets the number of
potential voters down to a _very_ small number.   And I'm not
happy with one or two people making any decision that would be
hard to undo unless there is a real emergency.

It is interesting that there is a well-established legislative
history in a number of jurisdictions to deal with just this sort
of problem.  The mechanism is have "normal" voting rules and
rules for emergency situations, with the declaration of an
emergency requiring a separate, supermajority, vote.  If I work
for GreedyCorp, I presumably have to recuse myself on a vote as
to whether or not to give them a contract, but I'm presumably
still competent to participate in a decision as to whether that
contract requires immediate action or can wait until more people
are available.

So I would modify the above to include some minimum condition,
i.e., to make the statement something like

         IAOC decisions are taken by a majority of the
        non-conflicted IAOC members who are available to vote in
        person, by teleconference, or by email.  However, except
        in an emergency situation, no decision may be taken with
        less than <condition> of the IAOC available to vote.
        Declaration of an emergency requires a 2/3 majority of
        the IAOC members available to vote after all members
        have been notified of the possibility of that action.

Of course, the "emergency" provision, and the assumption that
people who had conflicts with the substantive matter would not
need to recuse themselves in a vote to declare an emergency,
could be abused.  But abuse of that variety would, I hope, be a
more than sufficient condition for a speedy recall action.

"<condition>" could be as simple as "three" or as complicated as
some requirement that at least one person appointed by the IETF
be included on the majority side.

    john


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