[Governance PEPs] Duration of a vote: start vote immediately or schedule a vote?

Committers
1

Hi,

In my governance PEP, I decided to use a duration of 1 month for all kinds of votes:

  • promote a contributor as a core developer
  • approve or reject a PEP
  • update the governance PEP

I decided to pick one month to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to give their opinion (even if they don’t vote +1 or -1, but just want to share their thoughts).

In the discussion of the PEP 8001, I asked if this duration is too long since @ambv proposed 2 weeks to vote for the governance PEP: PEP 8001: Python Governance Voting Process - #44 by vstinner He wrote:

It seems like the main difference between the PEP 8001 vote and the votes in my PEP 8015 is that the PEP 8001 announced the vote 1 month in advance, whereas in my PEP all votes starts “immediately” (once the board decided to start the vote).

Questions:

  • should I reduce the duration of votes in my PEP to reduce “churn”?
  • should I add a delay before a vote to announce the vote?
  • should more important votes have a longer duration? For example, 1 month to update the governance PEP but 1 week or 2 weeks to promote a core developer?

Since my PEP mostly wants to formalize the existing processes, maybe we should not add a delay before a vote, but only reduce the duration of votes. Proposition:

  • promote a contributor: vote open for 1 week
  • vote on a PEP: vote open for 2 weeks
  • update the governance PEP: vote open for 1 month
2 Likes
2

I would suggest two timeframes to look at: “notice prior to vote”, “duration of voting”.

I would recommend for minimum “notice prior to vote”:

  • governance votes (personnel, bylaws): 20 days
  • vote on operations / peps: 10 days
  • vote on contributor promotion: immediate

For “duration of voting”:

  • all votes: 7 days
  • governance PEPs: I would recommend 7 days but up to 14 seems reasonable. Longer than that is not needed if 20 days prior notice is given.
3

I’ll just note that lots of jurisdictions have early voting, vote-by-mail, absentee ballots, etc. that do increase the time allowed to vote. That increases turnout. But there’s usually a cutoff date after which new votes don’t count.

1 Like
4

Thanks @willingc, I updated all votes conditions in my PEP 8015. There are 4 different votes:

  • Promote a contributor: no notice, vote open for 1 week
  • PEP: 1 week notice, PEP can be updated during the notice, vote open for 1 week
  • Steering Committee: 3 weeks notice, candidates have to apply during the notice, vote open for 1 week
  • Update PEP 8015: 3 weeks notice, proposed change can be updated during the notice, vote open for 1 week

I prefer the new conditions, it’s closer to what we did in practice. Thanks Carol for the idea of formalizing the announcement of a vote in advance :slight_smile:

1 Like