[Elections] I am really worried...

[goran at krampe.se]

Hi fellas!

Ok, let me try to make this as short as possible so that you bother to
read it. I have followed the archive and I just can't help commenting.
These are my *personal* comments, nothing else. And hell yes, this is a
critical posting - but so be it, hopefully it will make my words come
through to you, and I don't care if I make anyone upset, this is all too
important for me to worry about that.

Now - I am *really* worried that this is not going well, so please,
please hear me out. And please, please don't start *arguing* with me -
because that would just make things even worse. In order to prevent
that, I will not reply to any replies to this post (but I will reply to
private email) - you may of course spend time discussing this post with
each other - fine.

1. Daniel wrote that he didn't see why there is a "rush" for an
election. The thing is - we *promised* that we were stepping down at
this date "no matter what" and that is what is going to happen. Period.
So yes, there is a *rush*. This is *very* important to the current board
and even more so to me *personally*. Let me underline the above by
saying that *I* (can't tell for the rest of the board) am stepping down
even if this team utterly screws it up and leaves us in a vacuum again.
Ok? And yes, if this fails I will blame this team, you bet.

2. It seems to me that you are fumbling the ball. Please, please, please
- save these endless discussions about voting systems and politics for
later. This team is not getting disolved after the election, you will
have plenty of time later too. Get a simple voting system in place ASAP
and make it transparent. I agree with the "worries" about accusations
later on about how legitimate the election was - but come on, keep it on
a practical level here. Most of us haven't even met in real life and I
could be a 12 year old girl from Uzbekistan for all you know, I could
even be 10 people on squeak-dev. Given all emails I write it sure
sometimes feels like that. :) Personally I would actually prefer to just
hack up a system that accepts votes from all subscribers to squeak-dev
and add a confirmation email mechanism to ensure one vote per person.
Sure, I could subscribe 100 people to rig the election - but such a
thing could pretty easily be detectable. Anyway, get something done -
Cees has repeatedly shown that he wants to help - use him for god's
sake. Then it is faaaar more important that you focus on 3 and 4 below
IMHO. 

3. You have so far only done one thing: discussing a voting system. In
fact you initially got another immediate task (which as far as I can
tell have been largely ignored) and you have done nothing on the most
important task of finding candidates and building an awareness of what
is coming on squeak-dev. If we don't have candidates it doesn't *matter*
what voting system we have!

4. You are actually IMHO missing the absolutely most important risk. And
no, it isn't fraud - it is the lack of participation. Just look at how
many signed up on this list! Hell, I am not worried about fraud - but I
am dead worried about only getting 11 people voting instead of 1000. And
if the voting system for example only allows voting on one candidate for
the board - then hey, it would make it even worse.

So in utterly short words:
	- Get a *simple* voting system set up NOW. A transparent one.
	- Find candidates. Start asking for them on squeak-dev. Start emailing
people in private to get them to step forward. Create awareness that
this is happing NOW.
	- Worry about the participation.

Ok, end of rant. If you are pissed off at me now and are itching to tell
me all about it - wait 10 seconds and then instead decide to show me how
wrong I am by getting this team to *deliver*. I don't care about
ANYTHING else.

regards, Göran

PS. Why haven't you tried making this team larger? You are so worried
about accusations from the community towards the board later on about
the election - if I were you I would be more worried about such
accusations *towards this team*.