WARNING: RFC lawyering follows.
I’m not sure I agree. Two paragraphs in section 4.17 of RFC 7437 govern this.
The first is the second paragraph:
No more than two volunteers with the same primary affiliation may be selected for the nominating committee. The Chair reviews the primary affiliation of each volunteer selected by the method in turn. If the primary affiliation for a volunteer is the same as two previously selected volunteers, that volunteer is removed from consideration and the method is repeated to identify the next eligible volunteer.
Clearly this is the procedure for the chair to follow if she detects that the list contains more than two people with the same affiliation. This is the procedure that was followed to remove Reshad Rahman, but note that the RFC does not call this being disqualified; just “removed from consideration”. This was not what happened with the Huawei candidates. In that case, the relevant paragraph is the sixth paragraph:
If a selected volunteer, upon reading the announcement with the list of selected volunteers, finds that two or more other volunteers have the same affiliation, then the volunteer should notify the Chair who will determine the appropriate action.
This puts the determination of how to proceed in the hands of the chair. She is not required to roll back the clock to simulate a situation in which Luigi Iannone had filled in the volunteer form correctly.
You're mischaracterizing what happened I believe. Luigi was always a Huawei employee, but the chair did not have that information. Once the chair had that information, the results of the selection process needed to be corrected so they were based on reality - Note: not "changed".
The whole process is designed to eliminate discretion from the
selection process. While I agree that the document says the
above, it does not mean that the chair may take any action they
choose. E.g. there were three Huawei members - what if she kept
Luigi and Tal and got rid of Xuesong? We still end up with two
Huawei members. In any event, you need to look at more than just
the above.
The correct path is to take the list from all common knowledge
and work from there. And that list built from the common
knowledge (the volunteer list, plus associations plus the random
seeds) has Luigi on it and Tal off of it. Per
It must be possible to repeat the selection method, either through iteration or by restarting in such a way as to remain fair and unbiased. This is necessary to replace selected volunteers should they become unavailable after selection.
and
If a single voting volunteer position on the nominating committee is vacated, regardless of the circumstances, the committee may choose to proceed with only nine voting volunteers at its own discretion. In all other cases, a new voting member must be selected, and the Chair must repeat the random selection process including an announcement of the iteration prior to the actual selection as stated elsewhere in this document.
If Luigi declines to take the position, "the chair must repeat
the random selection process" or work with 9 members. In
general, that's meant continuing down the list, not going back and
picking up someone who was already not selected.
I believe she has made such a determination, and has acted within the mandate of RFC 7437.
Luigi indicating he works for Huawei restructures the list and
eliminates Tal. Luigi indicating he won't serve triggers 5.7.
These are two separate events.
This is not ambiguous.
Mike
Yoav
