2007 Steering Committee Special Election

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Contents

Summary

PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE THIS WIKI PAGE WITHOUT COORDINATION WITH JON FERRAIOLO. This page contains important process information about the 2007 Steering Committee Special Election. If you have comments or suggestions, please submit them either via email to Jon or via the "discussion" tab on this page.

The election has already happened. Results are posted at 2007 Steering Committee Special Election Results.

Nominations occurred between Nov 12-25, 2007. The election took place from November 26-30, 2007. Nominations are entered and totes are cast using the following Web pages:

The sections below contain the text that explained the election to the members.



Introduction

The OpenAjax Alliance held a Steering Committee Special Election to elect a company to complete the remainder of the 2-year term that Zimbra was chosen to fill during the October 2006 election. Therefore, this election picks just one company to join the Steering Committee to complete a term that ends around October 1, 2008:

This election will use most of the same approaches were used in previous elections. Most significantly, we will once again use of Single Transferable Voting (STV) approach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Transferable_Vote) as the algorithm for choosing the election winners. In particular:

  • Nominations are entered via a Web page
  • Votes are cast via a Web page
  • Anyone from an organization can enter nominations or cast a vote. Although we suggest that the organization's Primary Contact enter nominations and cast votes, our Web pages use a participants database and allow anyone who is known to be a participant for a given organization to modify nominations for a given organization or cast votes for that organization. The pages are programmed to cc: the Primary Contact each time an organization's nomination entry is modified or his organization casts a vote.

Note that vote counting will be accomplished via the same algorithm, and in fact the same software, as in 2006. The Web pages for nominations and voting generate the same text file contents that are used as input into the vote counting software as in 2006. Therefore, if anyone encounters problems with nomination or voting Web pages, as a backup it is possible to accomplish nominations or voting by sending email to jferrai@us.ibm.com so long as those emails are time-stamped within the nomination or voting period.

Definitions

Member - An organization or individual that has signed the Members Agreement and had its application for membership accepted by the Steering Committee.


Members Each Have One Vote

Per the terms of the Members Agreement, each Member has a single vote. (Note: each "vote" consists of a list of candidates that the Member would prefer to see on the Steering Committee in ranked order of preference.)

Because most Members have multiple people who participate in Alliance activities, each Member must identify a primary contact person for their activities in OpenAjax Alliance (see http://www.openajax.org/join.html). It is expected that the primary contact person will execute any nominations or voting on behalf of each given Member, but in this election anyone who is registered within the participants database to be a representative of the given Member can modify his organization's nomination or cast his organization's vote. The software is programmed to cc: the primary contact each time someone from his organization updates his organization's nomination or casts a vote.


Nominations for the Steering Committee

Each Member may nominate themselves as a candidate for the Steering Committee.

For this election, we are using a Web application (Ajax- and OpenAjax-based, of course):

Nominations may be entered, modified or removed during the nomination period of:

  • November 12-25, 2007

(Based on US West Coast time)

This year anyone from an organization can enter nominations. Although we suggest that the organization's Primary Contact enter nominations and cast votes, our Web pages use a participants database and allow anyone who is known to be a participant for a given organization to modify nominations for a given organization. The pages are programmed to cc: the Primary Contact each time an organization's nomination entry is modified.


Voting

For this election, we are using a Web application (Ajax- and OpenAjax-based, of course):

The voting period is:

  • November 26-30, 2007

(Based on US West Coast time)

Instead of requiring that an organization's primary contact enter a vote, this year anyone from an organization cast a vote. Although we suggest that the organization's Primary Contact cast votes, our Web pages use a participants database and allow anyone who is known to be a participant for a given organization to cast votes for that organization. The pages are programmed to cc: the Primary Contact each time his organization casts a vote.


How votes will be counted and winners selected

Votes will be counted and winners selected using the Single Transferable Voting (STV) approach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Transferable_Vote), the same vote counting method used by Eclipse Foundation. STV is designed to handle multiple winner elections in a manner that promotes proportional representation. We will use the same open source software from Voting Solutions as used by Eclipse Foundation to count the ballots and determine the winners.

The winner will complete Zimbra's term, which ends around October 1, 2008.

Any ties (which are highly unlikely given the process) are decided by a random approach (such as a coin toss) supervised by at least 3 members of the current Steering Committee who are not subject to re-election in this year's election.

Note that we will reject votes and nominees from any organizations that have not submitted appropriate signed Members Agreements by the relevant election deadlines.


Voting Confidentiality

Under the assumption that some Members will want to cast their votes on a confidential basis, the Steering Committee will keep the votes confidential (but of course will announce the election results).

If any Member cares to dispute the results of the election, then the Steering Committee will make a judgment call about allowing that Member to have visibility to the databases and files that contains the votes.

Retrieved from "http://www.openajax.org/member/wiki/2007_Steering_Committee_Special_Election"
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