Re: Bundled votes and the secretary

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 12:08:01PM +0200, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 10:38:34AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > if he saw this mail and chose not to acknowledge the arguments, then he is
> > behaving in a wholly improper manner with regard to this vote, and frankly I
> > see no reason that we as a project should even honor the outcome of a vote on
> > this ballot as presented.

> These two statements I find most alarming.  

> As long as there is no clear and unambiguous violation of the constitution in
> the Secretary's actions,

As a matter of fact, there's that too.  This ballot has been assembled in
contravention of the Standard Resolution Procedure, which requires that new
ballot options be proposed as formal *amendments* to an outstanding GR
proposal in order to appear on the same ballot.  Manoj has overstepped his
authority in order to group separately proposed resolutions about orthogonal
questions on a single ballot, over the explicit objections of the
proposer/seconders.  This is not a power granted to the secretary under A.2.

> and absent a valid GR stating otherwise, the vote must be presumed to be
> constitutionally valid.

Ah, and how are we meant to get a valid GR when the secretary is actively
tampering with the GR process?

Recognizing the validity of the vote is not a "must".  The alternative is
that we end up in a state of constitutional crisis.  That's unfortunate, but
it's also unfortunate that our Secretary is failing to act in a manner that
safeguards the integrity of that office.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org