Re: GNOME Board of Directors Foundation Elections 2022 - Candidates

[Robert McQueen <ramcq gnome org>]

Hi Allan,

On Tue, 2022-06-07 at 15:15 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
> When I went to vote, I was uncertain how many seats were up for
> election. I've dug into it, and from what I can tell, this election
> is
> uncontested? Board terms are two years, the board has seven seats,
> and
> last year we elected three directors (Thibault, Alberto and Philip),
> meaning that four seats up are open this time round.
>
> Is that correct?

Andrea has given the official answer already, per
https://vote.gnome.org/2022/rules.html we are filling four seats in
this election.

However, this does not mean that all four candidates win automatically
- we still have to elect everyone who will replace the outgoing
directors. To be elected under STV, a candidate must meet a threshold
number of votes (see https://vote.gnome.org/results.php?election_id=32
for example, the threshold is 28).

So, if any of the candidates are not acceptable to you, you may submit
your ballot without voting for them, and just vote for 0, 1, 2 or 3
candidates in your preferred order. Any candidate that does not achieve
the threshold number of votes cannot be elected, so we'd fill fewer
seats than are open, and I guess we will need to re-open nominations
and re-run the election.

Some election systems have a "none of the above" option that makes this
very explicit, but it's probably timely to remind voters that not
voting for a candidate does behave differently to ranking all four by
preference.

(Also, although I don't believe it's the case this year, in GNOME's
bylaws the order in which directors are elected can sometimes have an
effect. The affiliation and new non-member director requirements can
eliminate a candidate and require the counting process to appoint the
candidate with the next highest number of votes.)

> Allan

Thanks,
Rob