preferential voting, take N

[Luis Villa <luis tieguy org>]

So, elections are coming around again and so it is time for me to
raise preferential voting as an option again (and for the last time-
if it doesn't get picked up now, it has to become someone else's
hobbyhorse ;)

Previous discussion here:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2008-February/msg00007.html

Unfortunately, I'd hoped that selectricity would be ready for our use
by this time; I see no indication on their blog that new source or
feature releases have been made, unfortunately, which may make it
inappropriate. Mako? :)

Note that the process of changing voting methods is ill-defined. :)
The bylaws (which are binding and require a vote to change) refer to a
webpage (which can probably be edited by anyone with CVS access) which
refers to the charter (which says 'you must cast the same number of
votes as seats', but is not a binding document and has no formal
process for amendment.) So I think if the board wants to change this,
we can do it, but obviously we'd (1) want to get feedback and (2) we'd
want to ensure that there is bandwidth to ensure that the new process
works.

Luis

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Luis Villa <luis tieguy org>
Date: Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 10:53 AM
Subject: time to (re)consider preferential voting?
To: Foundation-List <foundation-list gnome org>


[Speaking purely as a Foundation member and not as a member of the
Board; I've not discussed this with the Board at all.]

Some years ago the Foundation considered the use of preferential
voting to select the board. At the time I opposed it, for reasons I
don't fully recall but which in retrospect probably boiled down to
'I'm unfamiliar with it.' I believe that at the time we'd also have
had to write the software, which would not have been fun. But I've
come around to believing that this is a better way to run elections.

It appears that by the time of our next election, we'll have a
third-party, free software solution available for the problem, used
recently and successfully by FreeCulture.org.
http://blog.selectricity.org/?p=4

I'm still trying to puzzle through the bylaws (which are a bit of a
mess wrt voting) as to what it would take to actually enact this
change (bottom line is probably that the board can just say 'it should
be this way'), but in the meantime I thought it might be good to have
a bit of discussion here around whether or not this is a good idea.

Luis