Re: GNOME Foundation elections!

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

Daniel Veillard <Daniel Veillard w3 org> writes:

> > - October 16 (Monday): Deadline for submitting slates for the
> > elections.  Deadline for making changes to the charter.
> 
>    Ouch only 2/3 weeks from this preannouncement to have all
> the slates constitued.
>    Why slates too ? Can't this just be an election of individuals
> especially with so little experience and notice. It's a congress
> why not have a list of runners and let people pick X names from
> the list and declare elected the X most cited persons ? this is
> direct democracy and limits the political aspects.

The reason for slates is specifically to limit direct democracy. We
don't want the N most popular people to be on the board; we want to
get a board that balances the different constituencies in the project
(in terms of subprojects, companies, geography, etc). These might not
be the same sets. The slate system is a way to let the members have a
voice but at the same time try to maintain these kinds of
balances. For example, one goal we might want to have for a board is
at least one member from Europe. This might not automatically fall out
of straight voting. But if we have slates, it's easy to vote for a
slate that has this feature.

>   yes there is a machinery, at another level, how do you plan to
> get the slates made ??? Surprizingly the Steering Committee will
> submit a slate, sounds a bit fishy to me, sorry !

Why is it fishy? I doubt the steering committee will propose a slate
identical to the current steering committee composition, if that's
your concern.
 
> 
>   I hate this slate thing. Basically if there is 4 candidates I would
> like to see elected, but they are on different slates I can only vote
> for 1 (or 2 in the second case) of them. Damn that's frustrating espcially
> if X is like 10. Or do you expect all the "big names" to be in the same
> slate ;-)

It's unlikely all the "big names" will be in the same slate, because
GNOME has more than 9-11 "big names" total. I expect that people will
propose slates that are representative, and that include many of the
natural leadership figures of the project.

>   You also didn't explained one of the crucial aspects of the vote, 
> Suppose Slate A has 200 votes and Slate B 100 votes. Is the resulting
> board made of 2/3 of slate A and 1/3 or Slate B (which requires ordering
> in the slates then) or Slate A is declared winner alone. in the second 
> case and assuming the Board propose a slate, then I feel it's simply
> not fair. All bets would immediately go to this slate, drop the elections
> in that case and autoelect the board we will all loose less time.

Slate A wins in that case. It may be that the support of the current
steering committee will give a slate a strong advantage. However, it
only takes 5-10 people to propose your own. If you think you can do a
better job of picking a representative set of people, go for it! I
don't think there is any requirement that slates not overlap so you
could even include some of the same people as the steercom proposed
slate (I am not sure if there is a requirement for members of a
proposed slate to agree to be on it).

>   So I think that there is a lot of thing still in grey areas, and 
> a 2 week deadline sounds really really short !
> 

Perhaps the timing could be tweaked.

I think you are the first to raise serious objections to the slate
system of doing elections, but perhaps others have had concerns about
it that they have not voiced yet.

 - Maciej