Policy-Discussion

[Eva Stöwe <eva.stoewe AT cacert.org>]

Hi Karl-Heinz,

On 16.03.2017 11:44, Karl-Heinz Gödderz wrote:

Hi,

after reading below document I have a question about the election meeting.
There I see a difficulty as we have many time zones and for some it
would be mid-night or working time, which would hinder them to participate.

We should think about an alternate, maybe additional way to vote.
Maybe by mail as early vote or by proxy, like it is for CAcert Inc..

In that case _all_ information about candidates should be available at
time of invitation.

If we would only allow candidates that are known at the time of the invitation, most members would not be able to name a candidate, as most members probably don't know that they can add candidates and how to do this.

To enable every member to add candidates it is crucial to inform them first about this option and about the procedures and the like. To give anybody as much information as possible, I stated that the place where the final list will be placed has to be stated in the invitation, as well as known places for prior discussion about the members.

Please also note, that the elements that I named are the minimum steps. So there could be further mails.


But about your arguments regarding the vote as such.

I'm quite well aware about the issue of none-personal participation and the need to decide in advance, as I did a recent ruling on such topics for CAcert Inc.

There are 3 points and a crucial one to mention:
1. CAcert Inc has comparable "issues" and but has found some kind of manner how to deal with it. The process that I propose is somewhat based on what Inc does at the moment.

2. CAcert Inc knows two ways to participate if one does not have time to participate in person: early vote and proxy. As far as I know early votes were not used, much. Early votes are not much different from proxies only that the members decide themselves whom to trust with their early vote or also to enable them to have some more voice also for unpredictable situations.

Because of this I named the option that proxies could be possible (based on the decision of the conducting arbitrators).

3. There is the option of a deadline to name candidates and even a time-frame that would allow some preparation before the meeting.

While there is also the option named that nominations could be possible at the meeting, the general set-up indicate that this is probably only an exception.

And there IS my ruling about need to be able to prepare for meetings that I did in context of AGMs from CAcert Inc. It's not about cabinet elections. But the ideas as such ARE ruled within CAcert, so conducting arbitrators probably would be careful to ignore it.


Crucial point:
---> The final rules for the meeting are decided by the conducting arbitrators. So that they can fine-tune them for what is actually needed. (See below.) They decide about number of proxies and deadlines and if there is need for nominates at the meeting and the like. <--




So far I did not add the option for early votes. Because so far it was not really used and I also have some issues with this.

The major issue is that either it is not really used, than members could also use a proxy to a conducting arbitrator for the same effect.

Or it is heavily used, than it would provide one member or a group of members prior information about how the result likely could look like. Which I believe is an issue. (This is not the case with proxies, as they are much further distributed and only show a minor part.)

In theory one could consider some technical way to add votes. But we probably first should ensure that we have some reliable way to trust that system, so that it could not be abused. It also would have to enable the arbitrators to perform eligibility checks.

I see the issue that if a huge amount of people from an area where it's a bad time want to participate but on the other hand they don't know others, that they probably have issues to find a matching proxy.

But I would prefer to solve this with a "human" solution like proxies, nonetheless. If there is such a need, the arbitrators could for example
- try to set up a communication platform to find proxies.
- Or maybe even find a way to conduct the meeting in a way so that the votes can be added over quite some time (hours). ... The rules that I named do not say that the vote has to be done within 3 minutes or the like.
- Or they could increase the number of possible proxies for conducting arbitrators for pre-set proxies to enable something like early votes.
- ...
.... And actually the default rules probably don't even exclude early votes as such.



A short comment about the option to name members at the meeting:
We don't know if there will be enough candidates before the meeting. So even if we would try to solve this by repeating the meeting, at some point it could be sensible to allow nominations at the meeting under some conditions. So I would not want to exclude it as an option completely.



Well so much about my reasoning why I proposed it like I did. ...

But if you have specific other ideas about what should be added or changed or how to do it completely differently, please name them. So far it's just my first try, ... Alternatives help to improve, where there are issues.

Kind regards,
Karl-Heinz

Kind regards,
Eva

Am 26.02.2017 um 15:18 schrieb Eva Stöwe:

Hi,

yes, I know I stated that I would stop proposals around the Policy on
Heads of Power.

But nonetheless I have some ideas about how Cabinet can look like, which
I did not share so far.

Currently I am writing them down at:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kQ8eofMjAwLD7V2RNFCyMOX5y2yFpQniXel5TjApVOw/edit?usp=sharing

Yes, it's as informal as it can be, but so far it's only a collection of
my ideas and no proposal. It's so far also not worded as a policy. But
in theory a policy could be borne out of something like this. ... Or it
just could be discarded ;-)


So if you are interested have a look and add your comments / ideas.

Kind regards,
Eva

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