[EC-NCSG] Letter to Appellents

[Tapani Tarvainen]

Dear all,

Without now going in detail about the differences in your various
drafts (at quick look it doesn't seem hard to reconcile them, but I
haven't read them thoroughly and may have missed something), one thing
I want to do is make as sure as possible is that our decision will be
formally solid - don't leave any obvious problems someone might be
able to complain about.

One issue that needs to be addressed on the record: Robin and Monika
are appellants themselves and have an apparent conflict of interest.
They can't act on both sides of the dispute, but should recuse
themselves from formal decisions directly about the appeal.

This does not need to have much of practical impact.

I would suggest doing it as narrowly as possible: only on decisions
that are explicitly and directly about the appeal.

In particular that would exclude the EC decision on Wednesday. While
it was made as a reaction to the appeal, it was not formally about it:
EC just decided how to proceed with the election and ballots.
So there's no need to revisit that decision.

This would affect the official response to the appealants in that
formally it would not need (or should have) Robin's and Monika's
approval - but they would be able to reject it as appealants anyway.
And of course it would make no sense for us to send a letter that we
know in advance would be rejected, so for practical purposes we would
still all need to agree.

And of course I don't intend to limit discussion in any way, only note
that formally Robin and Monika would be talking as appealants rather
than as EC members.

On the other hand there is no formal need for me to recuse myself from
the letter. On the contrary: given that the appeal is in effect about
my acts even though formally addressed to the EC, I should accept
responsibility of what I've done and acknowledge that I accept EC's
decision. Recusal on the response letter would be an implied objection
to it and I should not be doing that.

To repeat: this would not change the way we do this in practice, I'm
not trying to add extra complications or delays, but to remove a
potential cause for someone to question the validity of our decision
and maybe even try to overthrow it.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen