Re: Just so I'm clear

[Yoav Nir <[e-mail]>]

On Oct 25, 2012, at 1:25 AM, Martin Rex wrote:

> Doug Barton wrote:
>> 
>> Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>>> 
>>> Let me get this straight: for the sake of procedures that are clearly
>>> designed to be hard to use,
>> 
>> While I think that 3777 probably errs on the side of too hard to use,
>> recalling someone from one of these positions _should_ be hard to do,
>> and should not be undertaken lightly.
> 
> There is a good reason why procedures for recalling someone from
> a position in a decision-making body with elected members is much
> harder than electing the person into that body.
> 
> Sometimes, members are elected by only a small majority over competitors,
> and they even may have been "weak supporting" votes, and those may even
> be known to each member.  Now it happens that those decision bodies
> have to occasionally make contentious or unpopular, but necessary
> and hopefully rational and mostly unbiased decisions,
> 
> What you want to avoid is those members with "weak" votes to worry
> about mainly pleasing one or a few very specific "voters" during
> those decisions, that could otherwise have them recalled by just
> those persons not voting for them again in the recall procedure.

All correct, except that the IAOC (and IAB, IESG) are not elected. Just as some companies have staffing committees which make the decision on who to hire and who to promote, the IETF has the NomCom. While they have the power to appoint people to vacant positions, they don't have firing power, and have no bigger say in a recall process than you or me.

There is a good reason to make it hard to unseat a president or prime minister. There is a good reason to make it hard to unseat an IAOC member if the claim is made that they're trying to get rid of him because he's voting against the decisions favored by Russ or Bob. This is not the case here. He has simply chosen a particularly strange way to resign.

If president Obama chose to hide in the presidential bedroom and not answer the phone, Mr. Biden would be sworn in within hours, not three months.

Yoav