[CCWG-ACCT] Minority Statements

[Alan Greenberg]

Thanks Steve,

Bernie Turcotte did most of the analyical work on this, but I will 
offer a few comments and thoughts.

Regarding your classifications:
- NP was not relevant, since this is not an in person vote and we are 
presuming that all parties could exercise their power if they chose.
- We have not considered Rec, because of the nature of the system. 
Just as in the GNSO Council, where it is presumed that often, 
contracted parties have a vested interest in the outcome of PDPs, as 
long as their interests are declared, they can still vote.
- We have classes a possible vote that is simply not exercised 
(through conscious decision or inattention) as an Abs.
- There is another category in our case, that of an AC/SO that is 
allowed to vote but prefers to be excluded because they have not 
opted in to the system. They are simply excluded from the possible 
pool of voters as if they did not have any rights.

In the CCWG, we have tended to say that most of the rights can be 
exercised by a super majority (>66%) or a 75% vote in favour. If 
everyone casts a Yes or No, that seems to be reasonable (one can 
debate the actual number of course).

We have also tended to say that a single AC/SO should not be able to 
alone, veto any action (there are some perceived problems with this 
on the budget veto issue, but let's ignore that for this discussion).

If you treat an abstention as a No, the above works fine (and this is 
how most but not all parts of ICANN treat abstentions). But some 
people feel that an abstention is a message that they do want to be 
part of the decision.

We may have as few as 20 votes in total. If just one person holding a 
weight=1 vote abstains, then we can simply reduce the denominator and 
the above criteria can stand. However a problem arises if a 
substantial part of the community abstains. For instance, if two SOs 
completely abstain, then the final decision can be made by a very 
small number of participants, and with sufficient abstentions, 
high-impact decisions can be made by a single AC/SO. It is true that 
this happens with the willful agreement of those who have abstained, 
but it is nevertheless capture by the remaining (and capture due to 
parts of the community losing interest was one of the things out 
expert advisors warned about).

Which leads to the options that Bernie and I considered for allowing 
abstentions to be excluded from the count, but nonetheless avoid 
capture. They essentially say that we cannot have too many 
abstentions, and that they must be spread around.

The last version we came up with was the following:

- To pass, the proposed proposition must have the required percentage 
of votes - Yes-votes/(Yes-votes + No votes)
- 75% or more of eligible votes must have been cast as Yes or No 
(that is, we are limiting the number of abstentions on not-cast votes 
to less than 25%
- More than 50% of the participating SO/ACs have to support the 
proposition - that is, for each of these SO/ACs, they must tally >2.5 
Yes votes.

Reviewing a number of scenarios, with these requirement, we can avoid 
capture and still be able to exercise the powers. Essentially it 
requires a significant part of the community to want to take the 
action. If too many people opt out and abstain, the power cannot be 
exercised, but a single SO/AC cannot veto.

However, it was felt that to use this set of rules, the process would 
simply be TOO obscure and opaque.

Hope this helps a bit.

Alan

At 01/08/2015 03:48 PM, Steve Crocker wrote:
>Alan,
>
>I am both curious and willing to help on the technical aspects of 
>the combining multiple requires or desires into an implementable plan.
>
>Is it possible to gather the multiple requirements and/or desires so 
>we can see whether a feasible solution exists?
>
>Let me offer some candidate terminology that may be granular enough 
>to help express the desired results.
>
>Within a given group and with respect to a particular vote, the 
>individuals will usually fall into one of the following five categories:
>
>o (NP) Not present (and hence not participating)
>
>o (Rec) Present but not voting because of recusal, usually because 
>of self-declared conflict or because the the group perceives a conflict.
>
>o (Abs) Present but not voting because the individual doesn't wish 
>to express either a positive or negative vote.
>
>o (No) Present and voting no.
>
>o (Yes) Present and voting yes.
>
>Can you express the desired results in terms of one or more 
>inequalities, ratios or other expressions among these terms?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Steve
>
>
>
>
>
>On Aug 1, 2015, at 11:57 AM, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca> wrote:
>
> > Ed, I believe that I was the first one to make a strong statement 
> that abstentions should be excluded from the vote. As few of us 
> worked VERY hard to come up with a vote-counting methodology that 
> did that and at the same time did not allow a very small part of 
> the community (the ones who "care" about the issue) to make 
> momentous decisions on behalf of ICANN.
> >
> > We did arrive at some scenarios that were acceptable from the 
> point of view of outcomes, but that were difficult to implement and 
> perhaps more importantly to explain. In addition to the simple Yes 
> vs No count that you allude to, it involved parallel requirements 
> for a minimum number of SO/ACs to support the proposition (and that 
> support was absolute, only counting Yes votes vs the maximum that 
> could be cast), and perhaps requiring a minimum number of 
> non-sbstention votes to be cast. As I said, it might work, but 
> would be a black-box and completely opaque method to those who did 
> not take the time to thoroughly understand it.
> >
> > If you can come up with a simple, clear way of doing it, please 
> propose one.
> >
> > Alan
> >
> >
> > At 01/08/2015 08:10 AM, Edward Morris wrote:
> >> About twenty minutes ago I submitted directly to the Chairs, per 
> the instructions given to us by Thomas in his email of 29 July, two 
> minority statements for (hopefully) inclusion in the report about 
> to be released for public comment. I had not intended to file any 
> minority statement but, upon reflection, two aspects of our 
> proposal caused me concern.
> >>
> >> The statements are attached here for community inspection and review.
> >>
> >> Kind regards,
> >>
> >> Edward Morris
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
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