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  • From: "Jeremy Blosser (emrys)" <jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org>
  • To: sm-discuss <sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] voting process
  • Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 17:26:16 -0600

On Feb 10, Sergey A. Lipnevich [sergey AT sourcemage.org] wrote:
> Jeremy Blosser (emrys) wrote:
> > vote results have to be examined. But we can get rid of 90% of the
> > concern
> > around casual "political" peer-pressure voting by keeping the initial vote
> > closed.

I'm not terribly comfortable with how I'm quoted there, since the first bit
without context ends up with an inverted meaning. I know you were probably
just cutting at the EOL, but for reference, this was the whole thing:

> > Obviously we can't have a completely
> > anonymous come-hell-or-highwater vote that never has a scenario where the
> > vote results have to be examined. But we can get rid of 90% of the
> > concern
> > around casual "political" peer-pressure voting by keeping the initial vote
> > closed.

> Or we can get rid of 100% of concerns by eliminating political
> peer-pressure and auditing the votes openly.

If you can find a way to eliminate political peer-pressure in any human
environment, you would probably be a Nobel candidate. Pressure doesn't
have to be real to be perceived, and even when it is real the person
providing the pressure isn't necessarily aware of it (ie, malice isn't
necessary).

Maybe you feel you are immune to peer pressure and such, and that's great
for you. You asked for specific examples of pressure, and while I'm not
particularly opposed to open voting myself, I can say that as a very new
developer I would have been hesitant to vote for any TL who wasn't the
incumbent, due to lack of real familiarity with the project. However, the
project guidelines required me to vote. Voting "abstain" is an option, but
again, as a new developer if I had to vote openly I would definitely have
felt implicit pressure to vote for a candidate (and not abstain), even if
that vote was not informed, to assert that I was serious about being
involved in the project. Is that an entirely rational position to take?
Not really. But human nature isn't always rational.

The important things are:

1) people are comfortable enough to participate in the voting process
2) we can provide reasonable assurance the results presented accurately
reflect the votes cast

Our community has asserted in past discussions that to achieve (1) we need
at least an initially anonymous vote. This impacts our ability to achieve
(2), hence the proposal put forward.

> Nobody can maliciously influence a vote when it's happening (while
> results are being collected), and after it's done, the results become
> open for audit purposes.

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