Hi all,

I have just published a provisional timetable for the March 2010 elections, including two changes to previous elections worth pointing out.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...ection_Q1_2010

The election timetable for the next Community Council election is (all deadlines are set at 23:59 UTC):

• February 10: Election announced
• March 2: Deadline for karma for electorate
• March 2: List of potential candidates published
• March 2: Nominations open
• March 16: Nominations close
• March 17: List of candidates announced
• March 23: Voting opens
• March 30: Voting closes
• March 31: Results announced

The first change is that I've fixed March 2nd as the deadline for karma calculations for the electorate this year - we have always had a delay between the date the voting was supposed to open & the date that it actually opened, because we needed to extract the users from the maemo.org database, format them properly & filter on karma, and then generate the mail data to send tokens & insert the electorate into the election database. That process takes a few hours, since it involves 2 different people, so we typically have a frantic rush to get the election underway when we say it will be.

The second new addition is a week between the close of nominations and the opening of voting for the election. Again, there's always been a lag between the nominations closing & the creation of the election, and I've been a little frustrated that there hasn't been more debate & discussion of the relative merits of the candidates in the run-up to elections - since voting starts straight after candidates declare, and most candidates come in at the last minute, there isn't really time.

I think these 2 minor changes will make the election process run smoother, and allow for a better election, and having run them past the council, I'm sure that the community as a whole will find them positive too.

Since we're announcing the election dates now, anyone who does not yet have 10 karma, or hasn't let linked their maemo.org and talk.maemo.org accounts, now has a few weeks to do so before the election process starts.

Thanks for your attention!

Dave.

There's a slight complication in that karma has been frozen for a few weeks now. There are a few threads on it, and I know the bug got marked high priority. But telling people to link their profiles for karma purposes depends on karma actually functioning.

Hi Kathy!

Yes - giving a few weeks notice also has the added benefit of giving a hard & fast deadline to the relevant maemo.org people to get this major issue resolved.

Obviously any continuing karma calculation problems will push back the date where we freeze the electorate, but March 2nd is far enough away that these problems sound be fixed. They're supposed to be included in this month's sprint already: http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Sprints/February_10

But now that I look, I don't see it. Strange.

Will follow up for you.

Dave.

Should we start a separate thread (yet) for candidate declarations (not necessarily nominations)? Or hold off?

I nominate Guber99!

Candidate declarations have to be submitted to maemo-community to be considered valid (and any cries of "but I don't subscribe" should be treated with disdain since a prospective council member should already be involved in such things, IMO)

Whether a single thread is then created for a "debate" is a separate matter; but we're not at that stage yet IMHO.

For reference, instructions on linking your accounts can be found here:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Link_talk.maemo.org_account_with_maemo.org_profile

Nothing stopping people from saying they want to run, but I don't see a need for a separate election thread yet.

Cheers,
Dave.

I like the addition of a week for debate of the candidates before voting starts.

One thing though, the last election was complete on 9/27/09 and I think the timeline should be changed so that this election is complete by 3/27/10 to comply with the requirement that there be a maximum of 6 months between elections.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...ection_process

Looking at the timeline, I would suggest that the three days needed come from the two weeks allotted for nominating candidates.

Thanks for your remarks & suggestion.

I don't think that closing the election on the 31st is a big deal - the days work out nicely since the 31st is on a Wednesday. In general, it's not good to close an election on a weekend, or to start it or end it on a Friday or Monday, because of some manual interventions that need to be done, and because sometimes we have had false starts (some errors sending emails, or setting up the election).

In the past, the 6 months has not been a very hard & fast "to the day" guideline - the elections have always happened in September and March, and I'm happy for that to continue.

Cheers,
Dave.