Constitutional amendment: reduce the length of DPL election process

Time Line

Proposal and amendment Thursday, 31st July, 2007 Wednesday, 6th August, 2007
Discussion Period: Wednesday, 7th August, 2007 Saturday, 22nd September, 2007
Voting Period Sunday, 23rd September, 00:00:00 UTC, 2007 Sunday, 7th October, 00:00:00 UTC, 2007

Proposer

Anthony Towns [ajt@debian.org] [<20070731074806.GB4634@azure.humbug.org.au>]

Seconds

  1. Wouter Verhelst [wouter@debian.org]
  2. Nico Golde [nico@debian.org]
  3. Aurelien Jarno [aurel32@debian.org]
  4. Aníbal Monsalve Salazar [anibal@debian.org]
  5. Pierre Habouzit [madcoder@debian.org]
  6. Andreas Barth [aba@debian.org]
  7. Steve McIntyre [93sam@debian.org]
  8. Thijs Kinkhorst [thijs@debian.org]
  9. Neil McGovern neilm [neilm@debian.org]
  10. Ana Guerrero [ana@debian.org]
  11. Julien Cristau [jcristau@debian.org]
  12. Marc Brockschmidt [he@debian.org]
  13. Steffen Joeris [white@debian.org]
  14. Amaya Rodrigo Sastre [amaya@debian.org]
  15. Joerg Jaspert [joerg@debian.org]
  16. Frederik Schueler [fs@debian.org]
  17. Luk Claes [luk@debian.org]
  18. Alexander Schmehl [tolimar@debian.org]
  19. Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho [ajk@debian.org]
  20. Konstantinos Margaritis [markos@debian.org]

Text

Choice 1. The actual text of the resolution is as follows. Please note that this does not include supporting or opposing arguments or rationales. These may be found on the debian-vote mailing list archives.

Change section 5.2 of the constitution concerning appointment of the Project Leader to reduce the nomination period to a week, and the voting period to two weeks. In wdiff format:

5.2. Appointment

  1. The Project Leader is elected by the Developers.
  2. The election begins nine six weeks before the leadershippost becomes vacant, or (if it is too late already) immediately.
  3. For the following three weeks first week any Developer may nominate themselves as a candidate Project Leader. Leader, and summarise their plans for their term.
  4. For three weeks after that no more candidates may be nominated; candidates should use this time for campaigning (to make their identities and positions known). discussion. If there are no candidates at the end of the nomination period then the nomination period is extended for three further weeks, an additional week, repeatedly if necessary.
  5. The next three 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.
  6. The options on the ballot will be those candidates who have nominated themselves and have not yet withdrawn, plus None Of The Above. If None Of The Above wins the election then the election procedure is repeated, many times if necessary.
  7. The decision will be made using the method specified in section A.6 of the Standard Resolution Procedure. The quorum is the same as for a General Resolution (4.2) and the default option is None Of The Above.
  8. The Project Leader serves for one year from their election.

Amendment Proposer A

MJ Ray [mjr@debian.org] [<46b6fd8a.e1VCnIIfHLMNtBlZ%mjr@phonecoop.coop>]

Amendment Seconds A

  1. Aníbal Monsalve Salazar [anibal@debian.org]
  2. Simon Richter [sjr@debian.org]
  3. Felipe Augusto van de Wiel [faw@debian.org]
  4. Wesley J. Landaker [wjl@debian.org]
  5. Gaudenz Steinlin [gaudenz@debian.org]

Amendment Text A

Point 2 remains as before; that is, it will still read:

5.2. Appointment

  1. The Project Leader is elected by the Developers.
  2. The election begins nine weeks before the leadershippost becomes vacant, or (if it is too late already) immediately.
  3. ...

Rationale: Having a buffer zone of three weeks is useful for continuity and/or cases where the nomination period must be extended. A buffer zone has been included in DPL elections in recent years.

Quorum

With the current list of voting developers, we have: 

 Current Developer Count = 1049
 Q ( sqrt(#devel) / 2 ) = 16.1941347407016
 K min(5, Q )           = 5
 Quorum  (3 x Q )       = 48.5824042221049

Quorum

Data and Statistics

For this GR, as always statistics shall be gathered about ballots received and acknowledgements sent periodically during the voting period. Additionally, the list of voters would be made publicly available. Also, the tally sheet may also be viewed after to voting is done (Note that while the vote is in progress it is a dummy tally sheet).

Majority Requirement

Since this proposal and amendment would require modification of a foundation document, namely, the constitution, it requires a 3:1 majority to pass.

Majority

Outcome

Graphical rendering of the results

In the graph above, any pink colored nodes imply that the option did not pass majority, the Blue is the winner. The Octagon is used for the options that did not beat the default.

In the following table, tally[row x][col y] represents the votes that option x received over option y. A more detailed explanation of the beat matrix may help in understanding the table. For understanding the Condorcet method, the Wikipedia entry is fairly informative.

The Beat Matrix
Option
  1 2 3
Option 1   129 196
Option 2 82   159
Option 3 29 51  

Looking at row 2, column 1, Choice 2: As above, but do not change election start date in section 5.2.2
received 82 votes over Choice 1: Reduce the length of DPL election process

Looking at row 1, column 2, Choice 1: Reduce the length of DPL election process
received 129 votes over Choice 2: As above, but do not change election start date in section 5.2.2.

Pair-wise defeats

The Schwartz Set contains

The winners

Debian uses the Condorcet method for voting. Simplistically, plain Condorcets method can be stated like so :
Consider all possible two-way races between candidates. The Condorcet winner, if there is one, is the one candidate who can beat each other candidate in a two-way race with that candidate. The problem is that in complex elections, there may well be a circular relationship in which A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A. Most of the variations on Condorcet use various means of resolving the tie. See Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping for details. Debian's variation is spelled out in the constitution, specifically, A.6.

Manoj Srivastava