Clarify and document nomination process for chairs.

[mikeal]

The TSC has been following something like the nomination process for membership in the CTC/TSC for the TSC election but there's actually nothing documented for this process in a chairperson election in the TSC Charter and I can't find anything in any other related governance document.

As @williamkapke has nominated everyone in the TSC this raises several other questions for which I don't have great answers.

• What about people who previously said they would not run like @rvagg?
  • It was then noted that he would have to explicitly remove himself again.
  • What if someone then nominated him again, would he have to opt out again?

There's also no clear guidance on whether or not ranked voting is used (it's called out as an option but isn't what we used in prior elections, but I don't recall us having more than 2 candidates so it wouldn't have been a factor). This new opt-out process impacts the votes a lot more depending on the voting method and, as a result, also probably impacts how people feel about choosing whether or not to opt out.

With the election scheduled to start on the 17th we don't have a lot of time to answer these questions. If these aren't answered by the 17th my operating assumption for the crafting the ballot is that it includes everyone who was nominated, even if they are nominated after opting out and even if they have never commented on the issue, and that we are using a single plurality vote for the ballot.

I've noted several of my concerns and reservations about this approach but without clear guidance from the TSC I believe the above assumptions are the closest interpretation of the current process as written and is what I'll follow for the ballot.

[nebrius]

FWIW: nodejs/community-committee#31, which is where I think much of this discussion should take place.

Technically the approach we're taking now is the same as we've done before to the best of my knowledge, there's not actually anything new this time. The only difference is who has been nominated. The situation we're in now could have happened last time too, it just didn't.

As far as I am aware, we've always had the ability to nominate other people, and if so, there's nothing new here. If this is not the case that we can nominate people other than ourselves (and I admit I could be wrong on this), then that means William's nominations don't count because that change was never approved by the TSC, and the only people running are @jasnell for board, and @jasnell and @mhdawson for chair (IIRC).

It'll probably be kinda messy this time, and there's a non-zero chance we'll need to recall the election, but AFAICT, there's nothing new, and nothing that needs to be done before this election specifically. We absolutely do need to clean this up, which is why we're having the discussion in CommComm.

[mikeal]

Technically the approach we're taking now is the same as we've done before to the best of my knowledge, there's not actually anything new this time. The only difference is who has been nominated. The situation we're in now could have happened last time too, it just didn't.

Let me clarify a bit.

There is no written process for nominations that I can find, so almost anything seems "technically" feasible. The approach we've taken in the past is to encourage people to nominate themselves or other individuals. From that point on we just followed what seemed logical. In this case, someone nominated everyone and asked them to opt themselves out if they don't want to run, and now I'm trying to follow what seems logical in terms of process, and the above questions are what we're left with.

Normally we would have a discussion about a process change like this (like you have in CommComm) so that we could clear this up before the actual election but because of the way this happened we're left trying to answer these questions in just a few days before the voting begins.

[jasnell]

Closing as there has been no further progress on this discussion