Elections

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Elections

Colin Putney-3
Hi folks,

One of the things we promised to do when we joined the Software Freedom Conservancy was to formalize our election process. Despite our tradition of leaving these things until the last minute, we (the newly-elected Board) figured we'd sort this out well in advance of the next election, so we can hold it on time.

In practice, the election doesn't have to be all that formal, we just need to document the process. After a bit of discussion in our last meeting, this is the proposal that we came up with. We'd like to submit this to the community for review before sending it on to the SFC:

1. The Squeak Oversight Board has 7 seats.

2. The members of the board are elected annually to a 1-year term.

3. The election will be held during the first two weeks of March each year.

4. The election team will keep a publicly-available list of community members. Anyone on the list may run for a Board seat and vote in the election. (This could be modelled after the list used by Sugar Labs:http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Members).

5. Everyone who voted in the most recent election is automatically eligible to be added to the list.

6. Anyone can register as a member of the community by contacting the election team. Applicants should have made some sort of contribution to the community - for example, contributed code, reported a bug, written documentation or answered a question on a mailing list.

We figure the bar for becoming a registered member of the community should be pretty low, so just about any contribution would be considered acceptable. 

Questions, comments, concerns? 

Colin Putney, 
on behalf of the Squeak Oversight Board

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Re: Elections

Andreas Wacknitz

Am 15.05.2012 um 18:00 schrieb Colin Putney:

Hi folks,

One of the things we promised to do when we joined the Software Freedom Conservancy was to formalize our election process. Despite our tradition of leaving these things until the last minute, we (the newly-elected Board) figured we'd sort this out well in advance of the next election, so we can hold it on time.

In practice, the election doesn't have to be all that formal, we just need to document the process. After a bit of discussion in our last meeting, this is the proposal that we came up with. We'd like to submit this to the community for review before sending it on to the SFC:

1. The Squeak Oversight Board has 7 seats.
What if there are less than 7 candidates?


2. The members of the board are elected annually to a 1-year term.

3. The election will be held during the first two weeks of March each year.

4. The election team will keep a publicly-available list of community members. Anyone on the list may run for a Board seat and vote in the election. (This could be modelled after the list used by Sugar Labs:http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Members).

5. Everyone who voted in the most recent election is automatically eligible to be added to the list.

6. Anyone can register as a member of the community by contacting the election team. Applicants should have made some sort of contribution to the community - for example, contributed code, reported a bug, written documentation or answered a question on a mailing list.

We figure the bar for becoming a registered member of the community should be pretty low, so just about any contribution would be considered acceptable. 

Questions, comments, concerns? 

Colin Putney, 
on behalf of the Squeak Oversight Board


Regards,
Andreas




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Re: Elections

Randal L. Schwartz
>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Wacknitz <[hidden email]> writes:

Andreas> What if there are less than 7 candidates?

It makes the election much simpler. :)

We haven't actually had to deal with that in the past.  Generally,
they've been running about 9 or 10 candidates.  And I suspect if we had
a year where less than 7 stepped forward and it was close to the
deadline, there'd be a lot of discussion on squeak-dev to get a few more
hats in the ring.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion

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Re: Elections

Colin Putney-3
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Randal L. Schwartz
<[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Wacknitz <[hidden email]> writes:
>
> Andreas> What if there are less than 7 candidates?
>
> It makes the election much simpler. :)

To put it another way, it's possible for a seat to be empty. If there
aren't enough candidates at election time, then (1) all the candidates
we do have automatically get elected, and (2) one or more seats are
left empty. The board can function without all the seats filled.

Colin

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Re: Elections

Casey Ransberger-2
In reply to this post by Randal L. Schwartz
Yeah, if we needed another candidate, I'd probably throw my hat in. But it's a real nice Stetson bowler and I'm fond of it, so I don't toss the thing around lightly.

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Randal L. Schwartz <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Wacknitz <[hidden email]> writes:

Andreas> What if there are less than 7 candidates?

It makes the election much simpler. :)

We haven't actually had to deal with that in the past.  Generally,
they've been running about 9 or 10 candidates.  And I suspect if we had
a year where less than 7 stepped forward and it was close to the
deadline, there'd be a lot of discussion on squeak-dev to get a few more
hats in the ring.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - <a href="tel:%2B1%20503%20777%200095" value="+15037770095">+1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion




--
Casey Ransberger


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Re: Elections

Casey Ransberger-2
In reply to this post by Colin Putney-3
In the event of not enough board members, should we choose five rather than e.g. six, such that votes wouldn't be hung? Or appoint someone to break ties? The philosophers rarely bring enough forks for spaghetti anyhow, and an extra cause of deadlock would be bad. 

Andreas does make a good point. There is a contingency here that we might consider planning for, even if it is an edge case. And I really like my bowler.

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Colin Putney <[hidden email]> wrote:
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Randal L. Schwartz
<[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Wacknitz <[hidden email]> writes:
>
> Andreas> What if there are less than 7 candidates?
>
> It makes the election much simpler. :)

To put it another way, it's possible for a seat to be empty. If there
aren't enough candidates at election time, then (1) all the candidates
we do have automatically get elected, and (2) one or more seats are
left empty. The board can function without all the seats filled.

Colin




--
Casey Ransberger


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RE: Elections

Joerg Beekmann, DeepCove Labs (YVR)

Even with an odd number it may be not all board members are able to vote at a given time. Usual rules are that the chairperson does not vote except to break ties.

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Casey Ransberger
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 11:31 AM
To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
Subject: Re: [squeak-dev] Elections

 

In the event of not enough board members, should we choose five rather than e.g. six, such that votes wouldn't be hung? Or appoint someone to break ties? The philosophers rarely bring enough forks for spaghetti anyhow, and an extra cause of deadlock would be bad. 

 

Andreas does make a good point. There is a contingency here that we might consider planning for, even if it is an edge case. And I really like my bowler.

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Colin Putney <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Randal L. Schwartz
<[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Wacknitz <[hidden email]> writes:
>
> Andreas> What if there are less than 7 candidates?
>
> It makes the election much simpler. :)

To put it another way, it's possible for a seat to be empty. If there
aren't enough candidates at election time, then (1) all the candidates
we do have automatically get elected, and (2) one or more seats are
left empty. The board can function without all the seats filled.

Colin



 

--
Casey Ransberger



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Re: Elections

David T. Lewis
In reply to this post by Colin Putney-3
This looks good to me. It documents our election process clearly,
which is exactly what is required. In the event that the process
needs to be changed (such as changing the number of seats on the
board), it would of course be necessary to update the documented
process, but this should do nicely for now.

Dave

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 09:00:46AM -0700, Colin Putney wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> One of the things we promised to do when we joined the Software Freedom Conservancy was to formalize our election process. Despite our tradition of leaving these things until the last minute, we (the newly-elected Board) figured we'd sort this out well in advance of the next election, so we can hold it on time.
>
> In practice, the election doesn't have to be all that formal, we just need to document the process. After a bit of discussion in our last meeting, this is the proposal that we came up with. We'd like to submit this to the community for review before sending it on to the SFC:
>
> 1. The Squeak Oversight Board has 7 seats.
>
> 2. The members of the board are elected annually to a 1-year term.
>
> 3. The election will be held during the first two weeks of March each year.
>
> 4. The election team will keep a publicly-available list of community members. Anyone on the list may run for a Board seat and vote in the election. (This could be modelled after the list used by Sugar Labs:http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Members).
>
> 5. Everyone who voted in the most recent election is automatically eligible to be added to the list.
>
> 6. Anyone can register as a member of the community by contacting the election team. Applicants should have made some sort of contribution to the community - for example, contributed code, reported a bug, written documentation or answered a question on a mailing list.
>
> We figure the bar for becoming a registered member of the community should be pretty low, so just about any contribution would be considered acceptable.
>
> Questions, comments, concerns?
>
> Colin Putney,
> on behalf of the Squeak Oversight Board
>


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Re: Elections

Randal L. Schwartz
In reply to this post by Joerg Beekmann, DeepCove Labs (YVR)
>>>>> "Joerg" == Joerg Beekmann, DeepCove Labs <[hidden email]> writes:

Joerg> Even with an odd number it may be not all board members are able to vote
Joerg> at a given time. Usual rules are that the chairperson does not vote
Joerg> except to break ties.

Oh, now we're gonna have to come up with a chairperson, eh? :)

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion

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RE: Elections

Joerg Beekmann, DeepCove Labs (YVR)
Fair enough, I guess I jumped to a solution right away, buy hey that's
how my daughters Pony Club does it. Anyway back to my point which was
that mandating an odd number of directors does not mean you won't have a
tie on any given vote.



-----Original Message-----
From: Randal L. Schwartz [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 2:10 PM
To: Joerg Beekmann, DeepCove Labs
Cc: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
Subject: Re: [squeak-dev] Elections

>>>>> "Joerg" == Joerg Beekmann, DeepCove Labs <[hidden email]>
writes:

Joerg> Even with an odd number it may be not all board members are able
Joerg> to vote at a given time. Usual rules are that the chairperson
Joerg> does not vote except to break ties.

Oh, now we're gonna have to come up with a chairperson, eh? :)

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777
0095 <[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion

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Re: Elections

Andreas.Raab
In reply to this post by Colin Putney-3
This looks good. I'm not sure if it needs formalizing but in the past
elections we used to have an option like "none of the below" which I
think was helpful as a minimal bar to pass for a seat on the board. I
don't know if it's necessary but you could consider adding it to the
proposal (unless that precludes us from choosing other forms of voting,
hmm ...)

Cheers,
   - Andreas

On 5/15/2012 18:00, Colin Putney wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> One of the things we promised to do when we joined the Software Freedom
> Conservancy was to formalize our election process. Despite our tradition
> of leaving these things until the last minute, we (the newly-elected
> Board) figured we'd sort this out well in advance of the next election,
> so we can hold it on time.
>
> In practice, the election doesn't have to be all that formal, we just
> need to document the process. After a bit of discussion in our last
> meeting, this is the proposal that we came up with. We'd like to submit
> this to the community for review before sending it on to the SFC:
>
> 1. The Squeak Oversight Board has 7 seats.
>
> 2. The members of the board are elected annually to a 1-year term.
>
> 3. The election will be held during the first two weeks of March each year.
>
> 4. The election team will keep a publicly-available list of community
> members. Anyone on the list may run for a Board seat and vote in the
> election. (This could be modelled after the list used by Sugar
> Labs:http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Members).
>
> 5. Everyone who voted in the most recent election is automatically
> eligible to be added to the list.
>
> 6. Anyone can register as a member of the community by contacting the
> election team. Applicants should have made some sort of contribution to
> the community - for example, contributed code, reported a bug, written
> documentation or answered a question on a mailing list.
>
> We figure the bar for becoming a registered member of the community
> should be pretty low, so just about any contribution would be considered
> acceptable.
>
> Questions, comments, concerns?
>
> Colin Putney,
> on behalf of the Squeak Oversight Board
>
>
>


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Re: Elections

Colin Putney-3

On 2012-05-15, at 11:08 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:

> This looks good. I'm not sure if it needs formalizing but in the past elections we used to have an option like "none of the below" which I think was helpful as a minimal bar to pass for a seat on the board. I don't know if it's necessary but you could consider adding it to the proposal (unless that precludes us from choosing other forms of voting, hmm ...)

Yeah. We don't want to specify the mechanism, but if want to empower the community to vote for a board with empty seats despite the availability of candidates to fill them, that should certainly be specified.

This the following enough, or do we need to be more explicit?


7. The Board may operate even though not all of its seats are filled. There may be empty seats if a board member resigns, if there are not enough candidates in the election to fill all 7 seats, or if the community votes to keep seats empty rather than fill them with available candidates.


(Note that this contradicts what I said earlier. Even if there are fewer than 7 candidates, we still need to hold an election every year, because the community might want to vote *against* one or more of the candidates, and have more empty seats than necessary. In fact, it's precisely when there aren't enough candidates to fill the board that "None of the Below" becomes an useful choice - to prevent somebody from being automatically elected.)

Colin