User:Stephen Bain/Board election thoughts
These are some thoughts on the recent Board election, particularly focusing on time allocation.
Board size and election timing[edit]
This chart shows the current and former members of the Board, and their terms:
Based on the December 2006 Board expansion resolution, it seems likely that there will be a further expansion of the Board at the beginning of July next year, to add two more elected seats, for a total of three appointed seats (with terms of one year beginning 1 January) and six elected seats (with terms of two years beginning 1 July). The elected members will be in two tranches, commencing in alternate years.
The composition of the Board after that will look something like this:
There will need to be elections annually, this we know well in advance. The elections need to be organised early enough so that outgoing members can vacate their seats and incoming members can take up their ones on 1 July (this year the elections were delayed to the extent that new members were not elected until 12 July, thus leaving three seats vacant for twelve days, or else occupied for twelve days beyond the time that they were supposed to be).
Issues affecting time allocation[edit]
While I don't expect that all possible issues with running a Board election could be solved simply by allowing more time, an election that is not rushed will at least have the opportunity to deal with problems that are encountered.
- Translation
- It will be necessary every year, for every election, to translate materials relating to the election into multiple languages. Yet the amount of translation achieved in the 2007 election was less than that which has been achieved previously. For the 2004 election, the primary information page for the election on Meta was translated into 32 languages, and the 2005 election page was translated into 35 languages. In 2006 this dropped to 26, and in 2007 the main election page was translated into just 21 languages.
- There are a number of strategies that can be adopted to increase the amount of translation that is achieved. In the context of time allocation, these include:
- Putting the election committee in place early enough so that primary materials such as the election notice and information pages can be prepared in advance
- Identifying volunteer translators ahead of time, instead of after materials have been prepared, so that translation can commence as soon as materials are ready
- Obviously there are some materials, such as candidate statements, that cannot be available ahead of time. However, if primary materials such as information pages have been prepared and translated ahead of time, there will be more translation resources available.
- Development of process
- Sufficient time must be allocated for problems in the election procedure to be ironed out, both in terms of developing it and applying it. If community participation in development of the procedure is desired, then time must be allocated for that. Invariably there are teething issues when so many different projects come to participate in the elections and confront the procedure; the more time there is available to identify and resolve problems beforehand, the smoother the actual election will run.
- Community participation
- Voting turnout seems to have decreased in 2007, though it has always been fairly low. Accounts that are old and inactive, yet eligible to vote, should perhaps be taken into consideration (as they may inflate any count of active community members), though it is not known what proportion of eligible accounts these comprise.
- The possibility of engaging in mass efforts to increase awareness and participation has been mooted for the 2008 election. If that is desired, then time will need to be allowed for those efforts to be prepared and carried out, and for the effects to flow through.
- Endorsement system
- The 2007 election saw the introduction of an endorsement phase in the election, that is, candidates required a certain number of endorsements from members of the community eligible to vote in order to proceed to the voting phase. Based on my earlier critique of the election process, I feel that the endorsement phase should not run concurrently with the nomination phase, but should run after it.
- Several other people have suggested that prospective candidates should really have their endorsements lined up beforehand, and so it is fine for that phase to run concurrently with nomination. Since the stated purpose of endorsement is for the community to assess whether candidates are worthy of serious consideration or not, I do not think that this should be the common practice, or at least, the election process should not encourage it.
- Third party involvement
- The 2007 election saw the involvement of an independent third party, Software in the Public Interest (SPI), who hosted the voting system and tallied the results. This was broadly regarded as a positive move, and involvement of independent third parties is likely to occur in the future.
- Though it was announced relatively early on that a third party would be involved in 2007, that third party was not revealed until the eleventh hour before the election. One can only speculate as to the reasons for this, but the consequences included teething problems with the site established for voting by SPI, and issues of translation the interface there. Further, while the involvement of SPI was widely welcomed, had the community wished to comment on the selection of SPI, they could not have, as there was no time.
Timeline[edit]
What follows is a rough timeline of how the election should run. I have given my own estimates of roughly how long each part should take, and I have worked backwards from the last possible finishing date (30 June) to work out rough starting dates for each part of the election.
I've divided the timeline into six phases. I've also included a couple of buffer periods between some of the phases, both of which occur before periods in which new groups of people will be involved with the election (viz, before candidates need to be involved and before voters need to be involved) to allow people to prepare to participate. These buffer periods may or may not be necessary.
| Phase | Tasks | Time necessary |
|---|---|---|
| Development |
|
two weeks or more |
| Preparation |
|
one week |
| Buffer period | a few days | |
| Nomination |
|
two weeks |
| Endorsement | Voters can endorse candidates. | probably no more than a week |
| Buffer period | a few days | |
| Voting | Self-explanatory | one to two weeks |
| Verification and tallying |
|
one week |
Altogether, this represents a period of around two months assuming the lower estimates (compare about six weeks for this year's election) or around three months for a more relaxed pace.
See also[edit]
- Board elections/2008/en - planning page for the next election
- Thoughts for Deletion: Election process
- Thoughts for Deletion: On election timing