PEP 8001: Use CVIS instead of a github repository

[dstufft]

Suggested change to use CVIS instead of a github repository to enable private ballots.

[ambv]

I understand why you'd like the vote to be private while it happens but why insist on anonymizing identity of voters after the vote?

It's open source, we are supposed to work in the open. Being able to see who voted enables seeing what the voter population looks like. In other words, what pockets of votes are there and who did not vote at all. It also makes it obvious if somebody who shouldn't vote, does. Finally, it allows me to confirm that my own vote was recorded right.

[dstufft]

@ambv You may want to ask this question on either python-committers (the long thread) or Discourse. On python-committers three people (myself, Barry Warsaw, and Stefan Krah) expressed concerns about having public ballots, but said that we would still be voting, while Tim Peters said he planned on abstaining from the vote completely due to it being public. In the thread in discourse Mariatta has said that she would much prefer it if they vote was private, but would still be voting if it was public. Three additional people favorited my post proposing a private ballot, but it's hard to determine if they just liked the extensiveness of the argument or some other part of the post, or if they felt similarly about a private ballot.

I can't answer for Barry, Stefan, or Tim but my own personal reason is that I genuinely feel uncomfortable with a public ballot. A secret ballot allows every individual to vote how they want, without worrying about any potential fallout from the way they voted. Now I don't specifically think that say, rank PEP 8012 low that you're going to go out of your way to make my life miserable. But let's say I rank 8010 low but it ultimately wins. Will that hurt my own chances of being able to become "GUIDO" if I so desire it? Effectively, a secret ballot removes all extrinsic motivations for voting one way or another, and allows people to vote their true preferences. One can argue that we don't think this election is likely going to result in any sort of extrinsic pressure, but I don't think that is even possible (the mildest form of extrinsic pressure is just worrying that a friend of yours might be upset or hurt if you rank their proposal lower).

I don't believe that a secret ballot somehow runs counter to the idea of working in the open. The discussion was held in the open, the entire process was as well, including the full contents of every ballot. The only thing that has been kept secret is who specifically voted for what. In a discussion if someone is worried about speaking out, they can try to launder their thoughts through a trusted friend, but you can't do anything like that with voting.

I'm also not at all worried about knowing who voted and who didn't (honestly, if someone chooses not to vote, are they going to get blowback? Who knows!). I also don't feel like people are going to vote if they are not allowed to. While extrinsic pressures can be implicit and happen subconsciously, voting when you weren't eligible to vote is a very overt act of malevolence that I don't believe anyone involved is going to behave in that way.

It's true that the specific implementation of private ballot that this PR implements does not allow you to confirm that your own vote was recorded correctly while a novel encryption schemes generally would. We unfortunately don't have a novel encryption scheme handy. It is a downside to a public ballot, but I think it is a pretty small one, since I don't believe that CIVS is going to try to secretly undermine our election.

It feels to me like there is a fair amount of support amongst the core developers for using a private ballot and I don't see much of a desire for public ballots. That could simply mean that people who want a public ballot have checked out of the discussion or are generally being quiet because the PEP is currently written the way they prefer, I dunno. I think it's a least important to consider the fact that we have 4 people uncomfortable but still voting, 1 person completely abstaining, and possibly 3 other people uncomfortable all because of the use of a public ballot and whether that means that public ballot is not the right way to go here, and whether the use of a public ballot is going to meaningfully effect the outcome of the election (remembering that if someone doesn't feel comfortable posting their ballot public, they may not feel comfortable arguing against the PEPs public ballot at all (or feeling like it won't have any effect), and may simply choose to not vote).

[tim-one]

I haven't said I won't vote if the ballot is public, just that I probably won't. That's how I'm leaning.

Voting for a government is very different from voting on a technical proposal, and that's very broadly accepted. That's why, e.g., I don't believe anyone has ever suggested that votes for the PSF Board be wholly public - or in just about any other organization. Contrarily, nobody ever asks that +1/0/-1 polls on technical issues be made private.

Voting for a governance structure isn't wholly in either camp, which is why I'm only "leaning" so far. It's close enough to "pure politics" that it makes me queasy. If, e.g., the PSF membership decided to vote for its Official Religion, I'd resist making that a public vote too 😉.

[dstufft]

Ah sorry, that discussion happened when I was tired and I misremembered how strongly you felt. My bad! Thanks for clarifying.