Re: GNOME election results

[rms39 columbia edu (Russell Steinthal)]

Christian Schaller writes:

>Secondly I noticed that vote 211 and 212 seems to be the same ballot
>submitted twice but with different tokens. My guess is that it is just a
>mistake and it has no effect on the final outcome of the election
>anyway, but I thought I should mention it since the current result
>demonstrates that 1 wrongly approved ballot can make a difference in who
>gets on the board in future ellections. 

That was noted by several people in e-mail to elections gnome org as well.
We're treating it as a challenge and will investigate to determine whether we
believe one or both ballots is invalid before certifying the final results.

Without prejuding our decision, I'll note that there are two distinct members
in the membership file.  That doesn't necessarily determine the question, but
it does mean that we're not dealing with a bug in the ballot mailing/counting
scripts, which is a good sign.

We (or at least I) do think it's important to get even one vote issues like
this resolved, even if it can't affect the outcome, since as you note, the
precedent may be important for the future.

-Russell