On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 11:08:57AM +0100, Robie Basak wrote:
> Providing at least six valid nominations are received, voting
> shall commence on 2025-06-12 and shall last for approximately seven
> days, ending on or around 2025-06-19.
We've had four nominations out of the six required for a meaningful
vote, so I'm postponing the election schedule for the time being.
Getting enough volunteers has been a struggle for a number of years now.
Resignations and absentees have also caused considerable difficulties in
making decisions, as the DMB requires a simple majority of all board
members to make most decisions.
In recent elections the electorate had the option to exclude a
particular candidate by choosing the "No further candidates" option[1]
But it had never executed this option in practice. With fewer volunteers
than seats, this is the only function of the election that would remain
in practice. It seems unnecessary to make everyone to go through the
whole thing just for that.
So I wonder if it's worth continuing with elections at all? What if the
Technical Board were to just appoint DMB members as they felt
appropriate with a simple announcement, inviting prospective members to
apply to the TB directly?
We'd rely on the TB's judgement, but the TB is elected by the same body
so fundamentally we'd still be selecting DMB members, just indirectly.
If volunteers were to increase in number in the future, we could go back
to the election process.
Here's a concrete proposal:
1. No more DMB elections for now, including this one.
2. The DMB remains at a nominal seven seats.
3. When the DMB needs members, the TB will ask for suitably qualified
volunteers to apply privately.
4. The TB reserves their option to exclude particular volunteers
(privately), but this should only happen under exceptional
circumstances.
5. The TB announces new appointments which can therefore happen at any
time.
6. We'd like DMB members to commit to a two year minimum, but DMB
members can resign at any time, as before. In practice, given we have a
shortage of volunteers, they'll stay for as long as they continue to
volunteer.
7. If the TB finds that they consistently have more volunteers than
seats, they expect to switch back to the election system.
8. We send the current list of nominations to the TB for their
consideration.
Feedback appreciated.
Robie
[1] Effectively this was a traditional "none of the above" choice; the
different wording was to avoid ambiguity due to ballot ordering
presentation in CIVS.
