Re: GNOME Foundation elections!

[rms39 columbia edu (Russell Steinthal)]

[cc's trimmed]

On 27 Sep 2000 00:23:26 EDT, Havoc Pennington wrote:

>Rusty Conover <rconover zootweb com> writes: 
>> If the election is done via a mailing list on gnome.org will there
>> have to be an election body that determines validity of voters and
>> resolves any disputes about the election? 
>
>Probably a good idea; I can think of two options:
> a) current steering committee does this, with disputes also 
>    getting discussed on this list
> b) we come up with a group of people who aren't on a slate to 
>    do it
>
>I would vote for a) with the caveat that members would have to excuse
>themselves from any issue that they had an interest in, e.g. if they
>are on a slate that's involved in a dispute. The problem with b) is
>that most of the people likely to volunteer to do political-type stuff
>may well be on a slate, and we wouldn't have the election body during
>the nomination period, and we have no good process to select the group
>of people.

My inclination would be to go with an impartial body, i.e. a 
committee without any members who are also standing for election.  If 
there happen to be current steering committee members who meet that 
criterion, so much the better, but I would preference impartiality 
over membership on the steering committee.  Perhaps it's just because 
I see managing recusals as too complex, given that most of the 
steering committee is likely to be standing for election.  (Imagine a 
dispute over a given voter: anyone on any slate could have an 
interest, which could theoretically leave the decision to the one or 
two non-candidate members of the steering committee.)

While I would think it would be better to have election supervisors 
with more built-up reputation in the community, I would be willing to 
volunteer if needed and wanted.  And I can guarantee that I have no 
neither the ability nor desire to stand for election to the Board. :)

-Russell

-- 
Russell Steinthal		Columbia Law School, Class of 2002
<rms39 columbia edu>		Columbia College, Class of 1999
<steintr nj org>		UNIX System Administrator, nj.org