Re: GNOME Foundation elections!

[Dick Porter <dick acm org>]

On Wed, Sep 27, 2000 at 02:10:22AM -0700, Bart Decrem wrote:
> 
> It seems like a number of people are concerned that the timeline I
> proposed earlier may be too compressed, so how about if we extend it by
> one week, as follows:
> - October 2 (Monday): Announce the elections on Gnotices, invite
> people to register to vote, invite people to submit slates.
> - October 23 (Monday): Deadline for submitting slates for the
> elections.  Deadline for making changes to the charter. (added one week
> here)
> - October 25 (Wednesday): Slates are posted on Gnotices.
> - October 30 (Monday): Deadline to register to vote.

Why is there a week between registration closing and voting beginning?

> - November 6 (Monday): Elections begin.
> - November 13 (Monday): Elections end.
> - November 14 (Tuesday): Election results announced.
> 
> Daniel:
> You and I disagree about whether having slates is better than letting
> people vote for individual board members.  Maybe a lot of people feel they
> way you do, in which case we should reconsider the proposed timeline and
> election process, but we've been at this for a number of months now and my
> feeling is that most people are comfortable with the idea of slates.

I agree with Daniel here: surely it's better to keep things simple and
elect individuals. The point about using slates to deliberately limit
democratic choice and protect us from ourselves is interesting, but
misguided IMHO. If the electorate doesn't want to have all board members
from the same continent/corporation/project/whatever, then it won't vote that
way. Imposing quotas just reduces the legitimacy of the result.

- Dick