Hi Mark,
At 07:19 PM 21-04-2019, Mark Nottingham wrote:
Without going into the other aspects of this draft (I'm watching
with interest), Section 2.3 caught my eye:
First of all, thank you for taking the time to read the draft.
> [RFC7437] requires at least 20 signatories for a recall petition with
> no more than two of the signatories having the same primary
> affiliation. That sets a very high barrier for a recall petition
> even though the recall petition requires a, justification, an
> investigation by a Recall Committee and a 3/4 majority of the members
> of the Recall Committee who vote on the recall decision. This
> document also proposes to decrease the number of signatures required
> to avoid making it impractical to invoke the first step of the recall
> procedures.
Sorry if I missed a previous discussion, but this strikes me as an
interesting change to couple to a proposed increase in the number of
people eligible to sign a recall petition.
Given that the number of people who attend IETF meetings -- both
physically and remotely -- varies quite a bit, and since we now can
track the size of both populations, I'd expect this number to be
expressed as a percentage of the total eligible population (however
the above discussion goes).
Looking at the attendance of the last five IETFs*, it appears that
about 777 people are nomcom eligible, so it would currently take a
bit more than 2.5% of that community to initiate a recall.
If remote participation is also counted, about 1083 would currently
be qualified; your proposed 10 signatories is 0.92% of that community.
What's the right number**? I'm not sure, but I'll make a few observations.
This is an interesting question. An IETF election is unusual as it
is not based on members who are eligible to vote. There is, as you
mentioned, attendees who are nomcom eligible. To keep things easy,
let's assume that the number is 777. The number of qualified voters
was as follows:
2014 139
2015 186
2016 128
2017 203
2018 177
Not all of them can be qualified signatories as there is the
affiliation restriction. The number of unique affiliations is around
90. The number in Section 3.1 is roughly 10% of that.
It seems to me that the number of signatories required helps to
ensure that the recall represents a significant portion of the
community, so as not to waste the noncom's time. I also see it as a
way to manage secondary effects; e.g., so that people aren't
dissuaded from putting their hands up for nomcom, lest they be
committing to a series of frivolous recall efforts.
I agree that the number of signatories should be a significant
portion of the community or else a disagreement on a decision, e.g.
you and I disagree on this draft, could be used to initiate a recall
petition. I understand your point about frivolous recall
petitions. It is possible for any participant to file an
appeal. That appeal could, in my opinion or yours, be
frivolous. The body responsible for making the decision would still
have to judge the case on its merits. There are more people, in
comparison with a recall committee, involved the decision-making. Is
an appeal a waste of IESG time?
I didn't receive any comment in which someone stated that he or she
would not be interested in being part of a recall committee. If
attendees in actual fact, as opposed to what is said, "participate as
individuals", they could volunteer for at least one recall committee
as it is less work than for a nomination committee. It will look
suspicious if there are affiliations which appear for the nomination
committee do not appear for a recall committee.
More importantly, perhaps, I think we also need to ask ourselves
whether we want our leadership concerned about the possibility of a
recall -- even if a failed one -- from a small, determined set of
people. I imagine there are upsides and downsides to that.
Yes.
To me, allowing 1% of the community to initiate such an action seems
like a really low bar for disruption, not at all a "very high
barrier". Looking elsewhere:
* Various Swiss cantons seem to run between 2% and 13% of the
electorate <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_election#Switzerland>
* In the UK, it takes 10%
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_of_MPs_Act_2015>
There is a report at
http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05089/SN05089.pdf
The following might be of interest to subscribers from the United
States of America:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674330092 Those
models are not applicable to the IETF given that the latter is not a
democracy. The random representation, as used within the IETF, is
not representative of what is described as the "IETF community".
The threshold, e.g. you mentioned using a percentage, is related to
the level of activity in an entity. The level of activity for formal
IETF decision-making is very low. A high threshold turns the process
into something there is there to make the IETF look good instead of a
process which is accessible.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
