[Elections] Checking in / next steps

[Daniel Vainsencher]

Many are stating it, but do you (or someone else) mind actually 
*arguing* why the elections are an urgent priority for this team?

As I see it, Squeak has managed reasonably well with unelected 
semi-officials. We all seem to agree that we now want actual-official, 
in the sense that they actually represent the community. Sure. But where 
exactly is the urgency? I don't see anything bad happening if the 
elections happen in two months time, instead of on the 15th.

However, there are several reasons to invest time (a couple of months, 
not a year) in having smooth tools for voting (including on elections):
1. If its smoother, more people will participate.
2. A good system (especially in the sense of using good tallying 
algorithm) will be more trusted by people, therefore making any 
elections done be more meaningful.
3. A fully automated system will allow any voter in the community to 
raise issues, rather than just the officials that can do the required 
manual system in a non-automated system.
4. Whatever system we come up with should be tested in production on 
non-critical decisions (web site layout, whatever) before it is used to 
decide elections that give people official positions that we are not 
used to having in the community.
5. An election is a part in a system. What are we electing people for? 
what decisions can the elected make beyond others? for how long are they 
elected? holding an election without considering these questions is 
meaningless. We will need discussions of this on squeak-dev (even if 
guided by some proposals from this team), and we will then need to 
decide on one of them.

This is the most important point - we need to make the whole system one 
that the community is happy with, not just the list of people. This will 
not happen on a deadline just because that's what fits some preconceived 
plan.

You're right - our goal is not building tools. And in my opinion, our 
goal is also not "to have an election". Our goal should be social, and 
about involving the community.

Daniel

Brent Vukmer wrote:
> Hello folks.  I apologize for being silent so long.  I think I overdid
> my traditional Christmas celebration/hibernation... :)
> 
> Thanks Lex, Daniel, Peter, Ken and Cees for your discussion. I'd like
> to hear from Benjamin and Masashi, too.  I will post a longer email
> (probably sometime tonight EST) with my thoughts about the upcoming
> election.  (In preparation for that, I'm re-reading the elections
> posts so far.)
> 
> Here are some initial thoughts about our short-term priorities, in
> which I realize I'm stating the obvious :).   The immediate priority
> for this team is the upcoming election in February.  We need to come
> up with a list of candidates and a means for choosing the candidates,
> and then we need to actually run the election.
> 
> I am very strongly biased towards using a low-tech solution to
> 
> 
> 
> I would prefer that we spend a minimum of time in the short-term on
> tool-building and reputation-system algorithm analysis.
> 
> I've skimmed the various suggestions (SqP, Condorcet, Agora, wiki) In
> the short term, I prefer that we err on the side of simplicity, and
> focus on "social engineering" rather than building tools.
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