[can I just say how much I've missed having both you and Tim around, Alex? đ]
On Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 17:28 Alex Martelli via python-committers, < python-committers@python.org> wrote: > There are plenty of precedents for mandatory voting, but the enforcement > mechanisms (if any) appear not to be applicable to our case. Note the "if > any": several countries declare voting a citizen's duty (in their > Constitution or otherwise) but don't actually enforce this duty in any way. > For example, that's the case in the United States: if you apply for > naturalization you will be quizzed on many things, including "what are the > duties of a citizen", and one of the latter is "participate in the > democratic process" which includes voting -- but if you don't, no > enforcement action is taken against you. In contrast, if you get a jury > summons (jury duty being another of those citizen duties) and repeatedly > fail to show up, you may end up in jail -- now THAT is enforcement of the > duty (and no Python community organism has, nor should have, such power of > enforcement. > And that lack of enforcement power is what makes me worry about mandatory participation to make a vote considered legitimate. > In Italy, where voting is declared to be a duty in the Constitution, at > the start of the Republic you'd get (until next election) a stamp of "non > ha votato" ("did not vote") in your publicly accessible judiciary record > (it would come up in any background search -- and, in a country where > firing employees was notoriously hard, some opined that such a flaw might > be grounds for dismissal if the employer so wished, although I've never > heard of it happening). That was abolished 25 years ago, in part because it > was randomly/capriciously enforced (many judicial districts were too > otherwise-busy to go through voting records and apply/remove the stamp!-). > So, now, Italy is in the vast camp of countries declaring voting a duty > (Italy's constitution was not changed on this subject) but not enforcing > the "duty" at all (indeed, failing to show up to vote is now often > advocated by adversaries of referendums, which have a 50% minimum > participation threshold to be valid and may well be easier to defeat by > getting people to just not show up -- since many others won't anyway for > other reasons -- than by getting them to vote against). > > Since I originally brought up a parallel between "which BDFL" voting, and > a Papal conclave, I would be remiss to fail to mention that since 1274 the > Cardinals are locked up "with a key" ("cum clave") until a Pope does get > elected -- usually a good-enough incentive to vote (though once the > citizens of the town where the conclave was held had to decide after a few > failed votes to only send in bread and water -- and later, said citizens > removed the roof of the palace where the Cardinals were locked up, hoping > that rain may speed up the proceedings). Colorful, but, again, not really > applicable in our case. > > What's left? The "public naming and shaming" Italy used until a quarter > century ago might work -- just make a little site listing the committers > who, while having a right to vote, haven't voted (yet). A VERY long voting > period might also help -- amendments to the US Constitution originally had > unlimited times for ratification (the 27th amendment, originally the 2nd > one proposed in 1789, was ratified 202 years after proposal), though these > days 7 years is a more customary time limit for ratification. Not sure if > these are good ideas. > > Another possibility is to avoid having separate thresholds for > participation and approval (US constitution amendments work that way -- > with the specifics being a threshold only for approval out of all States, > not how many States have voted for or against). I.e, if we decide 2/3 is > OK, a proposal might be approved if 2/3 of *eligible* voters have voted > for it -- no matter how many of the remaining 1/3 have voted against, or > not (yet?) voted at all (since, if 100% of eligible voters could be > bothered to vote, once the proposal gets 2/3 of the votes in favor, it does > not matter whether the remaining 1/3 vote against, abstain, or whatever). > This is not mutually exclusive with other ideas (of which, out of what I've > mentioned, the viable ones -- though not necessarily wise! -- would be > "public naming" of non-voters, and VERY long voting periods). > That is a good point of clarification. If we did super-majority, is it of all counted *votes* or all possible *voters*? We might be surprised by the participation levels, or we might be disappointed. So we might have to go on what we think is reasonable, try it, and if there's a threshold requirement then be prepared to have to vote again (and again ...) until the threshold is met (or we lower the threshold đ). Another bit of concrete numbers: to get 84 people (roughly 2/3 of 91) to have made a commit you have look back 7 years of commit history (that will include non-core folks and those who don't have privileges anymore). > Lastly, I suspect two votes should be separated: (1) what model we adopt > (BDFL, ruling triumvirate, whatever); (2) the model having been chosen, WHO > is going to serve (as BDFL, as triumvirate member, and so on)... > I'm assuming that's how we will want to structure it as probably any of these proposals will specify how someone(s) will be chosen. -Brett > > Alex > > On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 3:46 PM Donald Stufft <don...@stufft.io> wrote: > >> >> >> > On Jul 18, 2018, at 6:18 PM, Ĺukasz Langa <luk...@langa.pl> wrote: >> > >> > >> >> On Jul 18, 2018, at 4:56 PM, Brett Cannon <br...@python.org> wrote: >> >> >> >> While I am totally fine with a super-majority of votes for something >> to be accepted, I don't think the minimum participation requirement will >> work. If people simply choose not to vote then they choose not to (we have >> no way to really compel people to vote). >> > >> > It could be easily added to the list of things expected from a core >> contributor. It's not like this is a laborious chore, neither is it >> happening often. There are countries where voting is mandatory. >> >> Given that we donât have a lot of levers in our tool chest to compel >> voting, what would you propose we do if we get only a 35% participation >> rate? We canât drag people to the polls, the most we can really do is >> either keep running elections and hope you hit whatever threshold you >> decide on, or you start removing people who can vote until youâve removed >> enough people that the people who are participating now make up whatever >> your target participation rate is. >> >> The first choice there strikes me as unrealistic. Hope is not a strategy, >> and I fail to see why repeatedly offering the same vote multiple times is >> likely to increase the participation rate. In fact, I think itâs likely to >> decease it as people get tired of having to do it over again and just start >> giving up and viewing it as noise. >> >> The second choice seems⌠dishonest to me? Youâre not really increasing >> the participation of the vote, youâre just juicing the numbers to make the >> participation rate higher. Itâs selectively defining who is eligible to >> vote to make the numbers look better. >> >> Is there another option Iâm missing to compel people to vote? >> >> > >> > Taking a step back, there are two reasons I stress the importance of >> (almost) everybody voicing their support: >> > - this makes the decision authoritative ("the committers have spokenâ); >> >> I think this is largely a non-issue. In the US we do not have mandatory >> elections, and I donât see very many people challenging the authority of >> said elections due to the large percentage of non-voters. The most I >> generally see if people scolding those who donât vote. >> >> > - this ensures that we haven't omitted somebody due to poor timing ("I >> was on a sabbatical and couldn't voteâ). >> >> Unless you require 100% voting participation, it doesnât ensure this, it >> just makes it less likely. If you target 90%, then a full 10% of the people >> could have been excluded due to poor timing. >> >> I donât think itâs possible to fully eliminate this risk, but I think the >> best possible way of handling it is to advertise the vote well in advance, >> and allow the vote itself to take place over a reasonable amount of time. >> The more advance notice, and the larger the window of time is to actually >> vote in, the less likely timing becomes an issue. Just to pluck some random >> times out of the air, if you advertise the voting for 3 months and allow >> voting to happen any time in a months time, that gives people a full 4 >> months they will have to be completely unavailable to have no idea the >> voting is happening, and be unable to access a computer for a handful of >> minutes to actually do the vote at all in a month. >> >> > >> > If you feel like this is unrealistic because most of our committers >> aren't currently active, I hear you. But what I like even less is claiming >> that "we, the core team" made a decision when, say, just 35% of us voted. >> In such case it would be easier for those of us who disagree to claim the >> decision doesn't really represent the views of the greater core team. >> > >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> python-committers mailing list >> python-committers@python.org >> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers >> Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ >> > _______________________________________________ > python-committers mailing list > python-committers@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers > Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ >
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