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FW: [802SEC] Ballot periods



Title: Message
Roger-

My profound apologies. In my zeal to protect the process I was paying insufficient attention to courtesy.

More appropriately...
        1) It isn't the Balloting's job to determine balloting periods, it is clearly ours.
        2) I don't trust their judgement with respect to the defaults they may throw at us on whatever basis they decide (unless they quote chapter and verse of their P&P that over ride ours).

RE your statement:
Under the status quo, I do not agree that we are in danger of ballots being overturned on appeal for following the Balloting Center defaults (29-30 days for a ballot and 9-10 for a recirc). Those defaults are in accordance with LMSC and IEEE-SA rules.
Our rules currently say: "...for recirculation ballots,
Our P&P have screwed up because they narrowed the scope of a letter ballot to be that of a "Working Group Letter Ballot" instead of having a procedure for "letter ballots" and then requiring Working Groups (among others) to use it.

Clearly the scope of LMSC is both Sponsor and Working Group Ballots (ever since we became "self-sponsored" and broke away from TCCC years ago). This shows up in our P&P in clause 1 paragraph 3
The P802 Sponsor Executive Committee serves as the Executive Committee for both the sponsor ballot groups as well as the Standards Development Groups.  The standards sponsoring organization is designated as the LAN MAN Standards Committee (LMSC) and includes the Sponsor Executive Committee, a balloting pool for forming LMSC Sponsor balloting groups, and a set of Standards Development Groups.
AND
3.1     Function
The function of the Executive Committee is to oversee the operation of the LAN MAN Standards Committee in the following ways:
j)      Oversee formation of sponsor ballot groups and sponsor ballot process.
AND
Clause 4
The LMSC Sponsor Ballots will be administered by the Executive Committee in accordance with Section 5 of the IEEE Standards Manual and Procedure 7 of these rules.
There is, of course, no such thing as "the IEEE Standards Manual" anymore.
The last one was published in 1992 (paper only).
I do happen to have one, I could bring it to DFW.

The IEEE Standards Manual clearly says its our job, not that of Balloting. The IEEE Standards Manual does not mention balloting periods except for something about 60 days for mandatory coordination.

It says, in part, (5.2) "The Sponsor is responsible for supervising the standards project from inception to completion."

In sum, since:
1) It is our responsibility
2) We don't explicitly call out the periods for Sponsor Letter Ballots
I believe that the (implicit) rule till we get things fixed is our existing letter ballot procedures.
We gotta fix the obsolete reference to "The IEEE Standards Manual" in clause 4.

Again, my apologies.

Geoff

At 09:54 PM 2/4/2003 -0700, Roger B. Marks wrote:
Geoff,

I object to your characterization of my position. I don't see a record of me saying "we should just defer to whatever staff decides to do". What I said is that the 802 rules do not specify a minimum duration for sponsor ballots or sponsor ballot recircs.

If we change the rules to specify minimum durations then, of course, we ought to make sure that the Balloting Center runs our ballots accordingly.

Under the status quo, I do not agree that we are in danger of ballots being overturned on appeal for following the Balloting Center defaults (29-30 days for a ballot and 9-10 for a recirc). Those defaults are in accordance with LMSC and IEEE-SA rules. [The IEEE-SA doesn't say much about this, although the Standards Companion says "Recirculations normally do not take the time that regular ballots do--most are only about 10 days in length."]

I would support an LMSC rules change to require minimum durations on sponsor ballots and recircs. 30 days and 10 days would be my preference.

Roger


At 4:06 PM -0800 03/02/04, Geoff Thompson wrote:
Bob-

I believe that we screwed up on this one. I thoroughly support your effort. The SA staff is in no better shape than we are in this area and remember that, in spite of VERY long standing practice we had NO FOUNDATION WHATSOEVER in our OR/P&P for any recirc to less than 30 days for the majority of the last 20 years.

It is my position that Roger was incorrect when he said that we should just defer to whatever staff decides to do. This is an area where we could lose an appeal. I believe that the SA should be providing balloting services to Sponsors under Sponsor rules. Sponsors, in turn, are supposed to get their P&P approved by AudCom. It is not a rigorous system. Paul ultimately is on the hook for the decision.

I would like to take him off the hook...
        ...assure that there is adequate time for review
        ...and remove any uncertainty regarding our system.

My position will be that, with an underlying rationale to see that the ballot is in hand for at least 10 days, our rules need to say that all 802 ballot (i.e. Working Group and LMSC) recirculations will be at least 15 days from the timestamp of the announcing e-mail until the close of ballot.

Thanks for grabbing the ball on this.

Geoff

At 12:41 PM 1/24/2003 -0800, Grow, Bob wrote:

Colleagues:

This is to inform you that I intend to propose a rules change to enforce minimum ballot periods for our Sponsor ballots.  I also intend to raise the issue of ballot periods to ProCom for all SA ballots.  It is now clear to me that the ballot center does not enforce any particular ballot period.  (I also can't find any rules/P&P that requires them to enforce any arbitrary minimum.)  I believe the ballot center operates to a default -- the ballot being open for some period of time on 10 dates in the US eastern time zone (probably restricted by the announcement being sent during their working hours).  In an exchange trying to determine how the ballot center counted "days", I postulate what I thought was a theoretical question asking if the period would be have to be 10 days (i.e., 10 * 24 hours) or only 10 calendar dates.  At the time the question was posed, I thought the ballot center was enforcing a minimum ballot period  what I got in response was an offer for a SB recirculation period a day shorter (i.e., 8.xxx days).

I just received a particularly onerous example of what is being allowed by the ballot center.  I received the announcement slightly before noon Pacific Time.  The ballot closes on February 2 at 11:59 pm EST.

So, for me, I have 9.375 days to respond (and four of those days are on a weekend).  For many international participants, they realistically will have much less time with this ballot (many won't see the announcement until their Monday morning).  If one or two of you would like to review my proposed rules change text prior to distribution to the SEC I would appreciate a response.

Bob Grow
Chair, IEEE 802.3 Working Group
bob.grow@ieee.org