Comment on the election rules

[Christian Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>]

I read though the election rules and have a suggestion for a small
change.
Item number 7 states that up to 11 names might be listed on the election
ballot
from each voter. I suggest that we demand a full 11 votes from each
voter or maybe another fixed number.   

In my youth (pretending to be very old here) I was active in youth
politics and one thing 
that poisoned many elections I participated in was the active voting
strategies that different fractions indulged themselves in (my own
included).  While this will probably not be a problem at the current
election and hopefully not ever, forcing the number of votes will at
least dampen the possibilities of such occurrences and help prevent a
culture for this sort of thing from ever evolving.

For those of you who doesn't see what kind of problems I am referring to
lets say that Microsoft (I don't want to risk insulting anyone :) has
started supporting GNOME and want 4 members on the board. They know that
3 of their candidates have widespread support and a sure to be elected,
but the 4th candidate is more unsure.  By getting all their GNOME
foundation member employees to just vote for their own 4 candidates,
instead of the full eleven they can then increase or maybe even be sure
that their 4th candidate gets elected.

While tactics like these are possible even when you have to submit 11
names in a valid voting ballot, they are much harder to do successfully
since you risk that the candidates you mark as low risk still ends up
with more votes than you own.

Christian