Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Sam Hartman]

> "Carsten" == Carsten Leonhardt  writes:

Carsten> FTR, I'd also prefer a separate GR.

Since no one prefers combining these efforts, let's come back to secret
ballots after Russ's resolution is resolved.

Carsten> Sam Hartman  writes:
>> new: 6. Votes are cast in a manner suitable to the Secretary. The
>> Secretary determines for each poll whether voters can change
>> their votes.

Carsten> The manner needs to also be suitable to the voters.

Thanks for bringing this issue forward.

Looking over the constitution, it looks like the
developers as a whole have no recourse if they disagree with a decision
of the secretary.
We can  bikeshed on what rules lawyering we could apply to effectively
get to a new secretary in the shortest time in that case.
(Yes, I do see paths for doing that).
Instead, let's not and consider the idea that we should provide some
mechanism for the developers to disagree with the secretary over
something like this.
And yes, I think it's fine for that to be part of the secret ballot
work.





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Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Carsten Leonhardt]

Sam Hartman  writes:

> new:
> 6. Votes are cast in a manner suitable to the Secretary. The
>Secretary determines for each poll whether voters can change their
>votes.

The manner needs to also be suitable to the voters.

FTR, I'd also prefer a separate GR.

Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Pierre-Elliott Bécue]

Le 10 novembre 2021 04:08:58 GMT+01:00, Bdale Garbee  a écrit :
>Pierre-Elliott Bécue  writes:
>
>> Then, we realized that we could probably add Secret voting (if it felt
>> right to everyone) as the discussion on Russ' proposal didn't go in a
>> too consuming spiral.
>
>Perahaps this exposes a distinction between those of you who have spent
>a lot of time thinking about these issues recently and feel that they
>all more or less are part of the same whole, and others of us who are
>trying to follow along relatively casually knowing we'll be asked to 
>vote at some point?
>
>I'm pretty confident we can collectively figure out how to vote
>meaningfully in either case, but I'd personally prefer to see secret
>voting treated as a separate GR with opportunities for significant
>consensus building before a vote is called.
>
>Bdale

I'm quite haépy to handle secret voting in another GR. :) 
--
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
From my phone

Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Bdale Garbee]

Louis-Philippe Véronneau  writes:

> I'd tend to be in favor of making this a separate GR.

I agree. 

Bdale


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Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Bdale Garbee]

Pierre-Elliott Bécue  writes:

> Then, we realized that we could probably add Secret voting (if it felt
> right to everyone) as the discussion on Russ' proposal didn't go in a
> too consuming spiral.

Perahaps this exposes a distinction between those of you who have spent
a lot of time thinking about these issues recently and feel that they
all more or less are part of the same whole, and others of us who are
trying to follow along relatively casually knowing we'll be asked to 
vote at some point?

I'm pretty confident we can collectively figure out how to vote
meaningfully in either case, but I'd personally prefer to see secret
voting treated as a separate GR with opportunities for significant
consensus building before a vote is called.

Bdale


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Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Pierre-Elliott Bécue]

Holger Levsen  wrote on 08/11/2021 at 18:21:02+0100:

> [[PGP Signed Part:No public key for 091AB856069AAA1C created at 
> 2021-11-08T18:20:57+0100 using RSA]]
> On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 12:12:33PM -0500, Louis-Philippe Véronneau wrote:
>> > I'd like to ask the community whether we'd like to handle secret ballots
>> > now, or in a separate GR.
>> I'd tend to be in favor of making this a separate GR.
> [...]
>> Adding yet another change to this proposal would only make things more
>> complex and make the issues at hand harder to understand.
>
> all of this and additionally personally I'd also find it disrespectful to
> hijack/piggyback (on) Russ' work.

Hi Holger,

Sorry if it seemed (as I'm one of the drafters of the secret ballot and
Russ' proposal, I feel a bit responsible for this) that there was an
attempt to hijack anything.

A bit of context:

When the GR about RMS occurred, I expressed my intent to have some
changes made to the Constitution, in particular regarding secret
voting. Russ reacted because he had also things in his mind he wanted to
see become more concrete and we started a discussion that took quite
some time at a time when I was a bit more available. Sam joined us in
the discussion and Wouter also at some point recently.

Then, and I'm at fault I think (because I got drowned in my personal
life stuff and did not state it clearly to Sam and Russ), things kind of
went under the dust until we attempted to resume.

In the meantime, it became clear that proposing Secret Voting and the
other changes was not going to be easy because it made quite a lot. So
Russ went on with everything except Secret Voting.

Then, we realized that we could probably add Secret voting (if it felt
right to everyone) as the discussion on Russ' proposal didn't go in a
too consuming spiral.

Russ said he was not against the idea.

Hence Sam's mail, which, despite what it could have inspired to you, is
not an attempt to hijack or piggyback any work made by Russ or anyone
else.

I hope this helps.

Cheers! :)

--
PEB


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Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Holger Levsen]

On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 10:38:01AM -0700, Sam Hartman wrote:
> Holger> all of this and additionally personally I'd also find it
> Holger> disrespectful to hijack/piggyback (on) Russ' work.
> I'm frustrated reading this message because it sounds like you've jumped
> to the assumption that I'm  hijacking Russ's work without coordinating
> with him.

I'm frustrated you read "I would find it disrectful" as disrespectful.
I didn't know whether you coordinated with Russ and I did not claim
anything in that regard.

*I* find it disrespectful to piggyback on Russ' proposal and I respect
you and Russ disagree with me.

> I hope that in similar future situations, you ask rather than jumping to
> disrespect.

Same same.

And, I'd hope that in the future a GR on secret ballots will fail. Because,
they won't be secret (because they cannot be in technical terms) and 
they would fuel a cabal.

And there should be less cabals in Debian.

If you find this opinion disrespectful as well...


-- 
cheers,
Holger

 ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
 ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
 ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀  OpenPGP: B8BF54137B09D35CF026FE9D 091AB856069AAA1C
 ⠈⠳⣄

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we might as well
dance!


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Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Russ Allbery]

Holger Levsen  writes:
> On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 12:12:33PM -0500, Louis-Philippe Véronneau wrote:

>> I'd tend to be in favor of making this a separate GR.
> [...]
>> Adding yet another change to this proposal would only make things more
>> complex and make the issues at hand harder to understand.

> all of this and additionally personally I'd also find it disrespectful to
> hijack/piggyback (on) Russ' work.

Sam asked me explicitly if I would mind if he took this approach before
bringing it up here and I have (and had) no objections.  (I have no strong
feelings either way about whether to run this as a separate GR and am
happy to go with whatever the project consensus seems to be.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)  

Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Felix Lechner]

Hi

On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 9:38 AM Sam Hartman  wrote:
>
> rather than jumping to disrespect.

Please let's not fight fire with fire. I found Holger's comment quite
compassionate—at least compared to the comments he directed at me—and
would like to congratulate him.

He did not know that his facts were off. Neither did anyone else.

Kind regards
Felix Lechner

Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Richard Laager]

Your proposal seems fine at first glance. I would prefer to see this 
handled as a separate GR. If they don't conflict textually, you could 
run them in parallel, but honestly I'd prefer to see them run in series. 
A few more weeks of delay doesn't seem to be a problem for this topic.


--
Richard



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Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Sam Hartman]

Holger> all of this and additionally personally I'd also find it
Holger> disrespectful to hijack/piggyback (on) Russ' work.


I'm frustrated reading this message because it sounds like you've jumped
to the assumption that I'm  hijacking Russ's work without coordinating
with him.
I don't think you've asked either Russ or me that.
As it turns out, Russ, Pierre-Elliott and I have been discussing voting
changes for months, and we've been splitting the energy of who  works on
what.
Pierre-Elliott was originally working on secret ballots, but got busy
and was in favor of me bringing the question forward.

I hope that in similar future situations, you ask rather than jumping to
disrespect.

--Sam

Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Holger Levsen]

On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 12:12:33PM -0500, Louis-Philippe Véronneau wrote:
> > I'd like to ask the community whether we'd like to handle secret ballots
> > now, or in a separate GR.
> I'd tend to be in favor of making this a separate GR.
[...]
> Adding yet another change to this proposal would only make things more
> complex and make the issues at hand harder to understand.

all of this and additionally personally I'd also find it disrespectful to
hijack/piggyback (on) Russ' work.


-- 
cheers,
Holger

 ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
 ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
 ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀  OpenPGP: B8BF54137B09D35CF026FE9D 091AB856069AAA1C
 ⠈⠳⣄

Bottled water companies don't produce water, they produce plastic bottles.


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Re: Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Louis-Philippe Véronneau]

On 2021-11-08 12 h 01, Sam Hartman wrote:
> 
> 
> Russ made a final call for informal discussion.
> I'd like to ask the community whether we'd like to handle secret ballots
> now, or in a separate GR.

I'd tend to be in favor of making this a separate GR.

Although I welcome Russ' & al. efforts in modernising our voting
mechanism, I have to say the proposed changes are already complex enough
that I haven't found the time and energy to go through them seriously.

Adding yet another change to this proposal would only make things more
complex and make the issues at hand harder to understand.

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  Louis-Philippe Véronneau
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   po...@debian.org / veronneau.org
  ⠈⠳⣄


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Do we want to Handle Secret Ballots in the same GR as Voting Changes

[Sam Hartman]

Russ made a final call for informal discussion.
I'd like to ask the community whether we'd like to handle secret ballots
now, or in a separate GR.

The rationale for handling things now is that we can get it done with
and if a controversial GR comes up, we'll have the option of secret
ballots if that's how we decide things.

The rationale for delaying is that it may make Russ's vote easier.
we may also have a large number of ballot options if there end up being
a significant number of amendments to Russ's proposal.

Here's what a simple proposal for making all votes secret ballot might
look like.
If we choose to  handle things this time around, someone (I'd be happy
to) could propose this as an amendment when Russ makes his formal GR.
I suspect Russ probably wouldn't accept the amendment just so we could
have both options on the ballot.
Given the discussions so far we'd probably have four ballot options
(secret ballots times  the two approaches to managing discussion
periods).



Resolved that the Debian Developers make the following changes to the
Debian Constitution:

4.1.3:
old:
3. Votes are taken by the Project Secretary. Votes, tallies, and
   results are not revealed during the voting period; after the vote
   the Project Secretary lists all the votes cast. The voting period
   is 2 weeks, but may be varied by up to 1 week by the Project
   Leader.

new:
3. Votes are taken by the Project Secretary. Votes, tallies, and
   results are not revealed during the voting period; after the vote
   the Project Secretary lists all the votes cast. The identity of a
developer casting a particular vote is not public.  The voting period
   is 2 weeks, but may be varied by up to 1 week by the Project
   Leader.

rationale: I think we still want the ballots public because there's a
lot of useful analysis you can do on that.
Minimally state that the votes are not public without providing any
mechanism for how that works; that's up to the secretary.  There was
some discussion of using a DEP to provide specific mechanisms for
handling this; the secretary could of course take advantage of such
a DEP if it emerged.


4.1.6:
old:
6. Votes are cast by email in a manner suitable to the Secretary. The
   Secretary determines for each poll whether voters can change their
   votes.

new:
6. Votes are cast in a manner suitable to the Secretary. The
   Secretary determines for each poll whether voters can change their
   votes.

rationale:
Some of the systems being proposed for anonymous voting would work
better if they didn't need to use email.
Leave how that works up to the secretary.

5.2.5:
old:
5. The next two weeks are the polling period during which Developers
   may cast their votes. Votes in leadership elections are kept
   secret, even after the election is finished.
new:
5. The next two weeks are the polling period during which Developers
   may cast their votes.

rationale: no need for a special case for leadership elections any more.


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