Thanks to all, the election process is over. Right now we have a much larger issue going on, involving the transfer of Maemo to the community. Please read this thread for details on how you can help.



For unknown reasons, the Community Council Blog post did not generate a matching TMO thread. This thread will be used to discuss the upcoming election and any questions related to it. The blog item as been updated to link to this thread.

While it's been just over 5 months, the current Council feels that due to timing considerations the next Community Council elections are due at this time.
This election will be a very special one, considering the state of Maemo and Nokia and how things have unfolded over the past few months.


The election timescale (all times UTC) is as follows:

For Council the election timescale is as follows:
Nominations open: 00:00, Saturday, 15th September 2012
Nominations close: 23:59, Friday, 28th September 2012
Voting opens: 00:00, Saturday, 6th October 2012
Voting closes: 23:59, Friday, 12th October 2012
Nominations close: 23:59, Sunday, 28th October 2012
Voting opens: 00:00, Friday, 2nd November 2012
Voting closes: 23:59, Thursday, 8th November 2012

For Board the election timescale is as follows:
Nominations open: 00:00, Saturday, 15th September 2012
Nominations close: 23:59, Friday, 28th September 2012
Voting opens: 00:00, Saturday, 6th October 2012
Voting closes: 23:59, Friday, 12th October 2012
Voting opens: 00:00, Friday, 12th October 2012
Voting closes: 23:59, Thursday, 18th October 2012


What will be decided?

This year there are two elections to be run in parallel.

COUNCIL MEMBERS - The council is a body of volunteers taken from the Maemo community that acts as a focal point for the community. Historically, Council's role has been limited to representing developers on, and users of, maemo.org to Nokia (and vice versa). Examples of council activity can be found on the Council homepage or in the blog. The role of Council will continue to be as it was before, as a group to work with the Community, and act as a focal point for communication with group in charge of services needed by the community to continue, whomever that turns out to be.

BOARD MEMBERS- Due to Nokia's state, its funding for maemo.org in 2013 is uncertain. The community is working on bylaws for a new legal entity (currently with the working title “Hildon Foundation”) that can legally inherit the domain name or have donations (monetary, hardware and/or data) from Nokia, the current providers, and community members, which can be used to continue operation of resources vital to the community. The bylaws are currently in discussion, and will be formalized shortly. The initial Board for the Foundation will be elected parallel to, and with the same election rules and requirements as, those currently established for Council elections. It is expected that the Board elected for this new entity will adopt the community's desired bylaws and be ready to take the reigns as soon as the entity is ready for operation.

How does the vote work?

Each member of maemo.org, who has an account that is more than 3 months old and who has earned over 10 "karma" points on that account, gets an electronic ballot. This election ballot is a pair of "single transferrable votes". Voters will rank their Council candidates in order of preference; understanding that if their top candidate cannot get elected with the votes they receive, the votes are redistributed by rank order until all five seats have been allocated. They will then be able to vote for Board members in the same manner as the Council election above, with the list of candidates running for that body.

What's next?

Community members should be considering whether they want to stand for Council, the Board, or possibly for both. Anyone who has karma of over 100 is eligible to stand, including employees and sub-contractors of Nokia. When nominations open, you can nominate someone via an email to the maemo-community mailing list (which they must reply to and accept in order to be considered a candidate) or you can put your own hat into the ring by emailing the same list indicating such.

To be clear, candidates may choose to run for the Board, for Council, or for both bodies. Elections will be held at the same time, but each body will be voted on and tabulated completely separately. If a single candidate runs for both positions, they will appear in both ballot lists. At no point will vote tallies flow from one election source into the other.

Update Oct-2:

The list of nominees is complete, with one nominee pending Karma recalculation. Please review the list, and feel free to ask questions either here, on the mailing list, or on the wiki page. All candidates will be encouraged to answer community questions, preferably in a format that can be easily wiki-fied.

Just as a reminder, those that want to vote should be sure they have 10 Karma. Note that in order for your TMO activity to count, you must link your TMO account to your Maemo.org account. Be sure to do that if you have not done so already!

As the coding competition is about to end very soon, we should substitute the logo with another one about the voting, pointing to this thread.

Can I nominate people or are you only allowed to nominate yourself in person?

Dave you can nominate people via the mailing list...

You can, in fact, nominate anyone who meets the requirements. Please note however that the nomination period does not begin until September 15th. Also note that the nominee must reply to and accept the nomination on the mailing list to be considered as standing for the election.

Due to the wording of the election rules, the announcement of the election must happen at least one month prior to the actual election. This timing is the traditional method of holding the elections, and is designed to provide adequate advanced notice for everyone able to participate of the pending election process.

no idea where this will go (if anywhere), but in order to get a clearer picture of what we are getting ourselves into...
Q1) when will the new Council enter into office?
Q2) when will the Board enter into office?
Q½) will both terms overlap?
Q3) when and how will we accept or reject the "by-laws"?

I nominate the entire current council.

Will both the Board and the Council have a President?

The Gentleman/Lady with most votes?

how many underlords in The Board and the Council?

The new Council officially replaces the current council at the completion of the election although there is usually some delay and handover.

The Board being elected is for the new non-profit (that doesn't exist quite yet). So they don't start until there is an official meeting of the nonprofit at which each of the elected Board members formally accepts the position.

The council term is 6 months from the date of the election (although Nokia is likely to cut off before then - 12/31/2012). The Board's term is one year from whenever they take office. Despite being held at the same time, these elections are for different organizations and the overlap circumstantial (although it is my personal hope that the nonprofit can continue to use the community council body for facilitating maemo projects).

The bylaws process is going on now through community review and will continue as long as needed. We will be working to have a much improved draft by Sept 17th so that it can serve as a reference point during the Board elections. If there is a provision of concern in the bylaws, then it should be debated in conjunction with the Board election and asked of the Board candidates rather than the Community Council candidates.

Thread where by-laws are being discussed, & much of the above post is explained:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=86290