[NB there is a suggestion for a Web site that may make our lives easier at the bottom of this message]
From: [...] Ken Causey I'd like to float this as a solution to the quickly approaching vote for the 2006-2007 Squeak Foundation Board.
I note that. Comments inline. Once again, apologies for lateness.
- Solicit for people interested in sitting for the 2006-2007 SqF
board. This would be made up of 2005-2006 board members still interested in serving and any new prospects. Exactly how you (the Elections team) handle these selection of new prospects is up to you.
We need to decide this pronto. I propose that we allow anyone who can get nominated and seconded to stand. We need three pieces of information then: the agreement of the candidate, the nomination from the nominator, and the second from the seconder. I'd require the existing Board members to go through the same process, i.e. they are *not* automatically included in the election.
I'd also suggest that any individual may only nominate or second one candidate, but that may be rather contentious.
We specify a SqP rank (apprentice or journeyman, this is open to debate) that is eligible for voting.
Use of SqP rank is contentious. I don't think we have any way of resolving that contention and achieving consensus. I also think that the established mechanism for doing that (kick the decision upstairs) is inappropriate in this case.
I genuinely have no idea how we proceed past this impasse.
However I think even if the 'process' is done outside of public view that exact data used is public and anyone that cares to make a snapshot of the people page at midnight GMT on the 7th can verify the data generated.
We'd need to snapshot the 'raw' ratings - who rates who as what - to ensure transparency, but yes.
b. Each listed member is given a fraction value to designate his or her desirability to the voter. The top listed candiate is given a value of 10/10 or 1. The second listed candidate is given a value of 9/10, the third 8/10, the fourth 7/10, and so on until the 10th listed candidate is given the value of 1/10. If the voter does not list all candidates then the listed candidates are given their appropriate values as above and all other non-listed candidates are assumed to have a value of 0.
c. A running count is maintained for each candidate as the votes are processed summing the fraction value in each vote for that candidate.
d. The 7 board members are selected by taking the 7 candidates with the highest sums. A comment is posted as quickly as possible on the 15th of february with the total sum for each candidate and listing the 7 new board members.
This is a very uncommon voting mechanism. Can we use something more common?
Variants of Condorcet, proposed by Lex and used by Debian, appear to be appropriate for the election of multiple candidates to posts; we could use something like http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/civs.html to run our election for us if we could identify our list of voters.
This mechanism is completely transparent and can be rechecked by anyone at any time to verify the results.
Indeed. For recording and counting votes, however, I'd settle for a system where the system's owner has no interest in tampering with the result. The Web site referred to above has this property.
- Peter
Guys,
Please. please please please. KEEP IT SIMPLE.
You haven't been tasked with running the next elections for President of the United States. We don't need biometric identification, trusted third parties or a notary public to count vounts, whatever. Just the Net version of 'please raise hands'.
We are just a bunch of guys in a *friendly* community. We have our technical differences, but I really cannot imagine any inside party seriously attempting to mess up these elections. Nor an outside party.
A system is needed that is reasonably objective and which stands a reasonable chance of listing the right people on the voter's registry.
It's easy to discuss this issue to death, to build in very strong safety guards - but let us do something *simple* and just go for it.
On 1/8/06, Peter Crowther Peter@ozzard.org wrote:
Indeed. For recording and counting votes, however, I'd settle for a system where the system's owner has no interest in tampering with the result.
Should I take that as an insinuation? I won't. Just let me put forward, for the record, that I don't have any interest in tampering with the result (as owner of the system where SqP runs). I wouldn't know why...
elections@lists.squeakfoundation.org