Anonymous Voting Referendum

[Glynn Foster <Glynn Foster Sun COM>]

Hi,

Back in September 2003, the board discussed a possible move toward an anonymous
voting scheme for the annual GNOME Foundation board of directors elections and
brought it to the members on foundation-list gnome org  You can read this thread
here -
                                                                                                                                                             
  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2003-September/msg00008.html
                                                                                                                                                             
After much discussion, it was agreed that there was significant objection to this
so that we should hold a referendum to decide whether future elections should use
an anonymous voting mechanism.

We hope to hold the referendum during the first week of October 2004, with more 
details to follow.
                                                                                                                                                             
Anonymous voting will allow members to vote for the board of directors in privacy.
While the breakdown of results will be open, the individual who voted for a given
list of people will not be named. Having had the experience of sitting on the
board for the past 2 years, it's crucial to have the right people for the right
job and quite often that choice is hard to make. Many people have felt pressured
to vote for colleagues or friends and not because they made a suitable GNOME
Foundation member.
                                                                         
When the referendum goes ahead in October, the current board recommends the 
GNOME Foundation members to vote to introduce anonymous voting. The current 
membership committee are in the process of defining the anonymous voting 
mechanism, and require the help of a few python developers. If you are interested
in reading about the current proposed mechanism, have a look here -

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/membership-committee/2004-March/msg00116.html

If you would like to help out, please get in touch with the Membership 
Committee by emailing membership-committee gnome org 

Glynn