Hi, everyone. Now that we have concluded deciding our GR procedure, I'd like to come back to the question of secret ballots that we decided to defer from the last round. As a reminder, that discussion started at https://lists.debian.org/tslilx2fuo8....@suchdamage.org In <87a6ic6wl1....@arioch.leonhardt.eu>, Carsten LEONHARDT noted that in addition to being suitable to the secretary, the manner in which votes are cast needs to be suitable to the developers. At the time, I proposed that one way to handle this would be to introduce a mechanism for developers to override a decision of the secretary. That handles a more general problem than the one Carsten identified. There are a couple of alternatives I can think about focused specifically on the manner of voting, but I think solving the general problem is good. So, I propose to allow the voters to override a decision of the secretary just as they can override the TC, the DPL, or the DPL's delegates. For most cases, I think it would be fine for the developers to override by a simple majority. There are two cases that stand out where I think that would be inappropriate: 1) The secretary's determination of what super majority is required for a particular ballot option. Imagine someone proposing to "interpret" the DFSG as not actually requiring source code for programs. The secretary decides that's not so much an interpretation of the DFSG as an actual change to the DFSG, and thus requires a 3:1 super majority. We wouldn't want to make it easier than 3:1 to decide that no, that's really not a change, and thus only needs a simple majority. 2) The secretary's determination of election outcome. I hope this never gets overridden, but you could imagine cases where there is a debate about whether to count certain votes or the like. Especially if any options on the ballot had super majorities, changing the election shouldn't be easier than these super majorities. I propose that both of these cases require a 3:1 super majority to override the secretary. (That is currently the highest super majority we require for anything including changing the constitution.) So, to be specific, I propose to add a paragraph 8 to section 4.1 (powers of the developers): 8. Override a decision of the secretary. Overriding the secretary's determination of the majority required for a ballot option or overriding the determination of the outcome of a vote requires that the developers agree by a 3:1 majority. The secretary's determination of whether a 3:1 majority is required to override the project secretary is not itself subject to override. I'd appreciate comments on this proposal and on the general issue. Assuming the discussion resolves reasonably quickly, I propose to send out a new version of the secret ballot proposal including a fix to this issue in around a week.
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