Re: GNOME Board of Directors Foundation Elections Spring 2009 - Preliminary results

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote:
> I disagree, afaik we just directly re-used the code received from
> maemo.org through you (iirc). Which in your March elections used this
> same system:
>  http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2009-March/002139.html

There are 2 things here: the election web pages which record votes 
(which I modified from GNOME's election pages for Maemo) and the 
software (and method) used to count the votes.

What I modified for Maemo was the database schema and the php code to 
record votes for the election. I also added a couple of pages to 
generate .blt files and display pre-calculated results rather than 
calculate them on the fly.

And, indeed, looking back at the results I used random STV - the same as 
Tobias.

Later in the thread: 
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2009-March/002147.html

"We could use fractional transfer if you want - and it could even be
retroactive to this election.

To ensure we weren't running the risk of controversy, I ran the election
under all variants of STV available, with different methods of
calculating thresholds and transfers. I can confirm that under all
scenarios I tried, the results remained the same."

The following message: 
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2009-March/002150.html 
proposes using fractional transfer because of verifiability, and that is 
what we will be using in the future.

> Let's stick to the process and wait for the MC to come up with a
> judgement over the challenge. Meanwhile we can keep discussing ideas for
> enhancing the election system/process/method.

OK, agreed.

And, going right back to the start of the thread, using Random Transfer 
STV with Droop-Static-Whole threshold is a valid thing to do, and with 
that method, and the order in which people voted, the winners are Behdad 
Esfahbod, Brian Cameron, Diego Escalante Urrelo, Germán Póo-Caamaño, 
Jorge Castro, Lucas Rocha, and Vincent Untz.

Cheers,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org