Re: changed charter, new elections proposal

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

rms39 columbia edu (Russell Steinthal) writes: 
> It might be; I was simply pointing out that if we really believe 
> broad representation is a paramount goal, we may not get that out of 
> a straight election.

Well duh; that's why we had the slates concept. ;-) A huge list of
"groups that must be represented" is a bureaucratic nightmare that
would constantly be going out of date, and would be far larger than
the number of people we can actually have on a board. It also
encourages ongoing meta-flamage about the election process (since
you're always adding/removing categories that need representing);
personally once we get the bylaws out, I'd like to put all the
lawyering behind us and just move forward.

Some people have mentioned a nominating committee as a way to try and
get more balanced/thought-out results from the election process,
without having to do slates. 

> I don't happen to think it's that important (I 
> think we'll get good diversity from the fact that the project is 
> diverse to start with)

With the direct "vote for 11 people" process we're assuming this is
true.
 
> (1) I would remove the reference to when the results will be 
> announced.  The election committee should obviously be charged with 
> certifying the results in as expeditious a period as possible, but I 
> could certainly conceive of a situation which would require more than 
> 48 hours to resolve ambiguities or disputes regarding the vote.

Agreed.

> (2) Similarly, we may need more than a day to review the final 
> registration list before elections begin.  OTOH, this can be 
> alleviated by simply having an understanding that if someone 
> registers and subsequently is determined to be ineligible (although 
> I'm not sure what could actually cause that finding), their vote can 
> simply be disallowed at any point prior to the announcement of the 
> results.
>

There's some value to disqualifying people in advance, namely that it
avoids charges of "you disqualified them in order to affect results,"
etc.

> (Although I still 
> think there *must* be more qualified people than me. :))
> 

The main qualification for most GNOME tasks is "has time to do it."
;-)

Havoc