Dear all,

As I've been accused of abruptly changing claimed long-established
precedent in the treatment of NOTA, I looked at how it's been done
in past NCSG elections since 2011.

The only case where I found the impact of NOTA explicitly addressed
by the Chair running the election was in 2011. Chair then was Avri
Doria and she put it like this:

"In the case of the g-council vote, the decision is to pick the top 4
people. So if 'none of the above' comes in in any of the top 4 places,
I suggest that it just gets skipped and the top 4 vote getters become
the g-council representative. It is just that those who got fewer
votes than none of the above, will have a clue about how hard they
will have to work in order to represent the membership."

http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1110&L=ncsg-discuss&D=0&P=115980

In 2012 the ballot, run by Robin, was organized differently:
candidates were explicitly selected by region, with separate NOTA for
each. No explanation seems to have been offered as to what NOTA means.
(I can't now find the ballot in the web, only in my personal mail
archive.)

In 2013 ballot was again run by Robin, this time with similar style as
today with a common pool of council candidates, but there was no NOTA
option at all.

http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A3=ind1310&L=NCSG-DISCUSS&E=base64&P=1735682&B=--Apple-Mail%3D_BE8CECBD-76B4-4895-954A-1A242E2FEF7E&T=application%2Fpdf;%20name=%22NCSG%20Election%20results%20October%202013.pdf%22&N=NCSG%20Election%20results%20October%202013.pdf&XSS=3

In 2014, run by Rafik, there was one common NOTA for all council
candidates, but no mention of it in the instructions.

http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1409&L=ncsg-discuss&F=&S=&X=31BCBB9C87C143B93B&P=1055

In 2015, again by Rafik, similar to 2014, except this time NOTA was
mentioned in his instructions - but without any explanation as to how
it would be treated, only stating that 'In each list (Chair, GNSO
councillors), you will also find the "none of the above" option.'

http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1509&L=ncsg-discuss&F=&S=&X=24E79EEDA4AE17FE9E&P=5880

Absent explicit instructions to the contrary I took "None of the Above"
literally: that you don't want to vote any of the candidates listed above.

So, out of five past elections, in one it was explicitly stated NOTA
victory would not actually impact councillor election, in one case
there was no NOTA option, one was different enough from current that
it's not really useful as a precedent, and in the remaining two
there was no explanation of what a NOTA vote or NOTA victory would mean.

Given such variance in past practices I don't see the present one
as a radical departure from any established process.

I do accept the chastisement of not having established the process
properly, however, and pledge to do so before the next election,
if I remain the Chair.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen