GNOME Foundation Annual Elections - proposal

[Glynn Foster <Glynn Foster Sun COM>]

Dear Members,

Over the last couple of weeks, the GNOME Foundation board of directors
have been discussing the annual elections, and in particular the
'openness' of the results. We would like to put forward a proposal for
anonymous voting, to be in effect for the annual elections in November
2003.

What is anonymous voting?
=========================
Quite simply, it will allow members to vote for the board of directors
in privacy. While the breakdown of the results will be open, the
individual who voted for a given list of people will not be named.

Why anonymous voting?
=====================
We feel it is crucially important to vote for the right group of people
- those that are dedicated and willing to spend the time doing
potentially menial tasks. The GNOME Foundation board of directors is not
a glamorous job, but important for the development of the project.

Many people have felt pressured to vote for people that were colleagues
or friends, not because they would make a suitable foundation board
member. Similarly, many people felt pressured because they didn't want
to be seen voting 'against' one of their colleagues, while we appreciate
that the GNOME Foundation board of directors is on an individual basis,
and not corporate.

How do we vote anonymously fairly?
==================================
We propose the following election proceedure -

With each 'voting card' that gets sent to a foundation member, there is
a key, a simple random string, that we use for authentication. This key
is kept private to the foundation member and elections committee. When
the time comes for the results to be made public, the elections
committee will substitute any name/email information with the key.
Members can check their vote based on their own private key.

If no one has any serious disagreement with this proposal, we would like
this adopted by the elections committee for the next annual GNOME
Foundation elections.

Glynn
[On behalf of the GNOME Foundation Board]