Elections, Accountability, and Education

[Paul W. Frields]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 07:56:12PM -0400, Tim Burke wrote:
> John Poelstra wrote:
>>
>> I wonder if the board would consider it reasonable to record the "yes"  
>> and "no" votes by member when the vote is not unanimous? I also do not  
>> think that someone should be able to abstain (which I think is more an  
>> indication of lack of resolve or ambivalence).  If we elect people to  
>> make hard decisions they should do so... not ride the middle or "decide 
>> not to decide".
>>
> Alternatively, perhaps abstain can be accompanied with a reason.  For  
> example,  a case where a board member does not consider him/herself to be 
> an informed enough expert on the topic and doesn't want a comparatively 
> uninformed vote to tip the balance.  In this case, which is better (or 
> what is the expectation)
>
> a) expect that all board members are required to invest whatever time it  
> takes to thoroughly understand ALL issues
>
> b) force board members to cast ill-informed votes
>
> c) allow board members to respectfully abstain in cases where they are  
> honestly not well versed enough on the topic; deferring to the expertiese 
> of others. 

It's pretty rare for us to have votes where *both* (1) a Board member
doesn't understand the issue at hand, *and* (2) no one else in the
call can resolve that member's understanding by answering questions.
By which I mean, if one doesn't understand the issue, abstention is
not as good as saying, "Can someone explain $ISSUE to me?".

Typically we try not to push things to voting or decisions when there
are major questions still floating around.  It's unfair not just to
the Board members but to the community too.  For these reasons, I
think (a) is best but the expectation is on the Board as a whole to
have a shared understanding of the issues.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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