[Gendispatch] Re: Comments on draft-nottnick-ietf-decisions

[Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>]

On 19 Aug 2026, at 21:22, John Levine wrote:

>> On 20 Aug 2026, at 11:01 am, David Schinazi 
>> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> \* In Principles, you imply that "rule by majority" is bad. I don't 
>> disagree, but it might be worth explaining why we think that's the 
>> case. Readers who are coming with a democracy-focused mindset might 
>> be confused. I don't have a great suggestion for how to fix it, apart 
>> from mentioning vote stuffing, which you already do. So I'd suggest 
>> removing the mention of "rule by majority" and only mentioning vote 
>> stuffing.

Vote stuffing is definitely one part.

> Majority voting only makes sense when you know before each vote who 
> gets to vote, so you know who it's a majority of.

That's definitely another part, and we do say it directly in that 
paragraph: "Because we have no concept of membership and anyone can 
participate..."

But I would also say that, even without intentional vote stuffing, we 
would still say that an unaddressed objection by a minority would still 
override a majority intent on ignoring it, and that unfounded assertions 
by a majority would still not override a well-founded point by a 
minority. Perhaps we still want to call all of that "ballot stuffing", 
but I really do think the principle is (as we say), "the consensus 
caller weighs what was said, not how many said it."

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best