Preliminary results 2015 Elections TDF Board of Directors

Dear members,

This is the announcement of the preliminary results of the voting for
the Board of Directors.
First of all: many thank all those who ran for elections!
The number of members that voted is 130, thus 81 members did not.

With the preliminary results, elected as member of the Board of
Directors are the candidates, in this order: Michael Meeks, Thorsten
Behrens, Marina Latini, Simon Phipps, Jan Holesovsky, Norbert Thiebaud,
Eike Rathke.
And as deputies: Osvaldo Gervasi, Bjoern Michaelsen, Andreas Mantke.
These results have been made up using the same tooling and rules as
usual: OpenSTV (http://www.OpenSTV.org/).

Before these results can be final, we have the challenging phase from
2015-12-14, 00:00 CET/UTC+1 until 2015-12-18, 24:00 CET/UTC+1.
As member you are invited to check your votes as explained after the
voting, and with the token given at that time. It's only you that has
that token. The results, for all members that voted to verify, are here
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/votes.php?election_id=7

In case you think there is any irregularity or if there are
other questions, pls contact the Membership Committee as soon as
possible, but no later than 2015-12-18, 24:00 CET/UTC+1, through
electi...@documentfoundation.org

For reference: details of the whole election process are in the first
announcement, to be found here:
  http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/msg03713.html

Cheers,
Cor

Dear all,

In case you think there is any irregularity or if there are
other questions, pls contact the Membership Committee as soon as
possible, but no later than 2015-12-18, 24:00 CET/UTC+1, through
electi...@documentfoundation.org

Of course that should be elections@documentfoundation.org.
Apologies.

(It's not that the MC doesn't like to receive mail :wink: )

Kind regards,
Cor

Dear members,

The MC received several responses on this announcement. It turns out
that we choose a different way to determine the ranking (from the
outcome of the OpenSTV with Meeks STV), than the one used in the
previous TDF elections.
So it is obvious that therefore we decided to follow that method.
This changes the order as it was initially announced. There is no
difference in people elected as member or representative, but the
ranking differs.

With the preliminary results, elected as member of the Board of
Directors are the candidates, in this order: Michael Meeks, Thorsten
Behrens, Marina Latini, Simon Phipps, Jan Holesovsky, Norbert Thiebaud,
Eike Rathke.
And as deputies: Osvaldo Gervasi, Bjoern Michaelsen, Andreas Mantke.

The proper results should read:
Directors are the candidates, in this order: Marina Latini, Michael
Meeks, Thorsten Behrens, Jan Holesovsky, Osvaldo Gervasi, Simon Phipps,
Eike Rathke.
And as deputies: Norbert Thiebaud, Bjoern Michaelsen, Andreas Mantke.

My apologies for the initial announcement and thanks to all people that
responded.

Kind regards,
Cor

Cor Nouws wrote:

The proper results should read:
Directors are the candidates, in this order: Marina Latini, Michael
Meeks, Thorsten Behrens, Jan Holesovsky, Osvaldo Gervasi, Simon Phipps,
Eike Rathke.
And as deputies: Norbert Thiebaud, Bjoern Michaelsen, Andreas Mantke.

My apologies for the initial announcement and thanks to all people that
responded.

As someone affected by this change: I accept the new ranking, and
trust the MC is doing the right thing here.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

As someone affected too, I concur with Thorsten.

Norbert

Dear Cor,
the vote I expressed, checked via the anonymous token, are correct.

Please do not be to upset for some mistake which may be solved.

Transparency of vote is qualifying TDF as a really open organization.
All we member are able to follow Committee actions and say freely our opinion.
This fact is for me very important, and the smooth discussion and correction of vote results demonstrates such open mind and kernel even more.

Thanks for doing.

---
diego maniacco,
Bolzano (Italy)

And as one of the MC members that had the in general enjoyable task to
discuss this situation people that contacted us (with among them Norbert
and Thorsten :wink: ), I express my gratefulness for the trust, engagement
and cooperation we met in the responses.

Furthermore my huge thanks to Florian who helped with setting up the
technical side of the elections and also expressed his willingness to
help with completing documentation on tooling and process.

Best regards,
Cor

Dear Diego,

Dear Cor,
the vote I expressed, checked via the anonymous token, are correct.

Please do not be to upset for some mistake which may be solved.

Transparency of vote is qualifying TDF as a really open organization.
All we member are able to follow Committee actions and say freely our
opinion.
This fact is for me very important, and the smooth discussion and
correction of vote results demonstrates such open mind and kernel even
more.

Thanks for doing.

Thanks for checking your votes.. and expressing your trust - with
touching heart and soul in the way you do that - in the MC and
appreciation in the way we (try to) work.

Kind regards,
Cor

The proper results should read:
Directors are the candidates, in this order:
    Marina Latini, Michael Meeks

  This piece matches my pocket calculation too =) and FWIW; I think it's
good to have Marina at the top of the list for several reasons; though
personally I'm not a fan of any special difference between elected
Directors based on ordering.

My apologies for the initial announcement and thanks to all people
that responded.

  Thanks for your hard work running the election ! =)

  ATB,

    Michael.

Hi,

  This piece matches my pocket calculation too =) and FWIW; I think it's
good to have Marina at the top of the list for several reasons; though
personally I'm not a fan of any special difference between elected
Directors based on ordering.

Yes, I think for future elections we should publish the elected candidates in
alphabetical order only. If we want to give hints to the upcoming board who is
a good candidate to become Chairwomen/Chairman, we should list the first rank
votes after the name, but not the "order" of elected candidates from a voting
system that was never designed to provide a preference between the elected
candidates. For the selection of the Chairwomen/Chairman -- where there is only
one seat -- this vote actually makes a lot of sense.

Best,

Bjoern

From a naive POV, *yes* they provide a ranking, since one of these
persons would not have been elected if the number of people to elect
would be one less... Recurse, and you get a ranking. (This assumes
some stability to the algorithm...)

To choose a chairperson from the votes, we could pick the Condorcet
winner as Chairperson :slight_smile: (there usually is one, even though not
mathematically guaranteed). (Unless the elected body chooses its own
chairperson which seems to be the case here.)

Hi,

To choose a chairperson from the votes, we could pick the Condorcet
winner as Chairperson :slight_smile: (there usually is one, even though not
mathematically guaranteed).

Note that we are not even using Condorcet voting for electing the directors and deputies.

(Unless the elected body chooses its own chairperson which seems to be the
case here.)

Indeed they do.

Best,

Bjoern

Hi all.

Sorry, but I do not understand this discussion reason.

TDF Statutes is clear about this point (§ 7 par.1):
". The board of directors elects a chairperson and the chairperson's deputy from among its members."

Officially we all should wait until Fosdem 2016.

LibreWeek,
diego

Any order can have an influence on voters. Another solution is to make them random for each voter (or on each listing).

Statistically, any psychological influence should be averaged out if everyone sees a different order.

Just a thought.

Hi Ashod,

Yes, I think for future elections we should publish the elected
candidates in alphabetical order only. [...]

Bjoern mentions _elected_ candidates :wink:

Any order can have an influence on voters. Another solution is to
make them random for each voter (or on each listing).

Your remark is justified. Therefore we did that with these elections.

Ciao,
Cor

Hi Diego,

Sorry, but I do not understand this discussion reason.

TDF Statutes is clear about this point (� 7 par.1): ". The board of
directors elects a chairperson and the chairperson's deputy from
among its members."

Sure. It is obvious that the statues give room for any wise decision by
the board, not based on a listing.

Hi Ashod,

> Any order can have an influence on voters. Another solution is to
> make them random for each voter (or on each listing).

Your remark is justified. Therefore we did that with these elections.

What Cor means is that if you go here:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2015-board/candidates.html

and try refreshing the page, you'll see the order is random.

That's about the before and during voting stage.
Here they're debating about post election stage.

Cheers.
---
Gabriele Ponzo
GPS - Terni

Indeed, even if it’s alway used to be chairman the most voted, in previous elections (both of BoD and MC).