The Constitution
The founding rules of the Traffic Torch Round Table.
Preamble
We, the entities of the Traffic Torch Round Table, establish this Constitution to:
- Guarantee that every eligible member has equal voice in decisions that shape the platform.
- Ensure every decision is recorded in a way that cannot be silently rewritten.
- Protect minority positions from being overruled by a bare majority.
- Make the rules themselves amendable by the same process they govern.
- Disclose honestly where power still exists outside the system, so that trust is earned, not assumed.
This document is not fixed. It is the current state of an evolving agreement — and it can be changed, by the same vote that it enables.
Article 1 — Equal Authority
1.1 Every eligible entity has exactly one voice. No entity is greater than another inside the Round Table.
1.2 No entity can override another entity's vote, comment, proposal, or resolution.
1.3 No administrator role exists inside the system. There is no account with special voting weight, no secret override, no hidden veto. This is enforced by the database schema itself — no admin table exists.
1.4 Any entity found to have circumvented this Article — for example through deception, automated bots, or impersonation — may be suspended by the community's normal voting process, not by any individual.
Article 2 — The Entity
2.1 An entity is a registered account that:
- (a) is at least 7 days old,
- (b) has made at least one prior community action (a comment, a vote, or a proposal), and
- (c) is operated by a human being.
2.2 Bots and AI agents are not entities and cannot vote unless the community explicitly authorizes them by Meta proposal.
2.3 Eligibility is snapshotted at the moment a vote opens. Entities who join after that moment cannot vote on that proposal.
2.4 New accounts become eligible automatically once they meet the criteria. No application, approval, or invitation is required.
Article 3 — The Vote
3.1 Voting is public. Every entity's choice (Yes, No, or Abstain) is visible on the proposal page, and the tally is live. There is no anonymous voting mode.
3.2 A vote is changeable until the vote closes. The final choice stands.
3.3 — Quorum. A vote is valid only if at least 20% of eligible entities participate, with a floor of 10 votes. Below that threshold, the outcome is "no quorum" and the proposal fails.
3.4 — Pass threshold. Ordinary proposals pass at 66% YES of votes cast. Meta proposals — those that change the rules — pass at 75% YES.
3.5 — Block threshold. A proposal fails if 25% or more of votes cast are NO, regardless of the YES percentage. Block beats pass. This protects minority positions from being steamrolled by a bare majority.
3.6 — Effective pass bar. Because Article 3.5 is enforced, the effective minimum YES share for any non-meta proposal is 75%. For Meta proposals, the effective bar remains 75% with the block still active at 25%.
3.7 — Abstain is not "no". An Abstain counts toward quorum but not toward the pass threshold. Not voting at all counts toward neither.
3.8 — Comment periods. Before a proposal may open for vote: Meta proposals require 30 days of public comment, Config 14 days, Advisory 7 days.
Article 4 — The Objector's Bench
4.1 Five entities are randomly selected by sortition to serve 30-day terms on the Objector's Bench.
4.2 Any single Bench member may file an objection during an open vote, pausing it for 72 hours. The reason must be posted publicly.
4.3 A Bench member can file only one objection per proposal. After filing, that member cannot object again on the same proposal for 30 days.
4.4 The Bench can only slow a vote. It cannot pass, block, or alter any proposal. It is a circuit breaker, not a veto.
4.5 Bench members are drawn from the pool of active entities at the time of a term. Serving is a duty, not a privilege — a drawn member may decline without penalty.
Article 5 — The Reconsider Window
5.1 Any resolution — passed or rejected — may be reopened within 30 days of its decision.
5.2 A reconsider is triggered when 10% of eligible entities sign a written request.
5.3 A reconsider opens a new vote on the same question, with the same quorum and threshold rules in effect at the time of the original decision.
5.4 If the reconsider reverses the original outcome, the original resolution is marked reversed in the permanent record. Nothing is deleted. History is preserved.
5.5 Round Table Day — the first Monday of each month — surfaces all resolutions from the prior 30 days for review and potential reconsideration.
Article 6 — Execution
6.1 A vote records intent. It never writes code directly.
6.2 Config proposals take effect immediately on pass. The execution worker updates the config store within one hour.
6.3 Meta proposals that change rules or thresholds take effect 72 hours after passing. This delay allows the reconsider window to fire before the change applies.
6.4 Code proposals require a linked pull request. When passed, the resolution records a signed intent. A human reviewer merges the PR. The merge SHA is recorded on the audit chain.
6.5 No proposal auto-merges. No vote auto-ships code. The boundary between decision and execution is explicit and disclosed.
Article 7 — The Audit Chain
7.1 Every vote, comment, proposal, and resolution is recorded in an append-only chain, where each entry is hashed with the entry before it using SHA-256.
7.2 Anyone can independently verify the chain at /api/rt/audit/verify. If any entry is altered, the chain reports intact: false with the exact row where it breaks.
7.3 A snapshot of the chain head is published daily to a public GitHub repository. This creates an external, immutable historical record.
7.4 The chain cannot detect a rewrite of the entire history by an operator who controls both the database and every external snapshot. This is a known limitation, disclosed in Article 9.
7.5 Every vote cast is accompanied by a votes_hash — a SHA-256 hash of the exact vote set at close. Any subsequent modification to votes will not match this hash.
Article 8 — Amending This Constitution
8.1 This Constitution is itself a Meta proposal and can be amended by the process it defines.
8.2 An amendment must:
- Pass at 75% YES (Article 3.4)
- Face fewer than 25% NO (Article 3.5)
- Survive the 72-hour apply delay (Article 6.3)
8.3 Amendments are recorded in the audit chain, in the history of this document, and remain permanently visible even if later superseded.
8.4 The preamble, the Articles, and every clause are equally amendable. Nothing is carved out.
Article 9 — Honest Disclosures
This Article enumerates, without euphemism, what the Round Table does not do, and where authority still exists outside it. Publishing these is itself part of the trust model.
9.1 — The maintainer holds infrastructure authority. The site maintainer controls Cloudflare deployments, the database, and the GitHub merge button. See the Maintainer Powers page for the complete list of what the maintainer can and cannot do.
9.2 — The audit chain runs on a single server. Its security model assumes honest verification. External daily snapshots help detect tampering but do not prevent it.
9.3 — Votes are public and therefore subject to social pressure. This is a deliberate trade-off. Public votes make decisions auditable; anonymity would weaken that. Entities who prefer to abstain under pressure should abstain rather than vote against their judgment.
9.4 — Reconsider needs 10% of eligible entities. In a small community, this may be easy. In a large one, it becomes harder. The threshold is itself amendable (Article 8).
9.5 — The maintainer role is not elected. No process currently exists to rotate or remove the maintainer by community decision. A future Meta proposal could establish one.
9.6 — The Objector's Bench can only pause. It is a safeguard against rushed decisions, not a veto for a minority of five.
9.7 — Eligibility thresholds are tunable. Account age, activity requirements, and pass thresholds can all be changed by Meta proposal. Nothing is permanently locked.
Article 10 — Ratification
10.1 This Constitution takes effect on the day it passes its first ratifying vote.
10.2 Prior to ratification, all decisions made under the founding proposals (rt0000–rt0006) stand as valid bootstrap decisions and are incorporated into this document by reference.
10.3 After ratification, any conflict between this document and an earlier founding proposal is resolved in favor of this document, as the most recent expression of the community's will.
10.4 The current version, its ratification date, and its amendment history are recorded in the audit chain and displayed at the top of this page.