Fellow Geekos, Speaking as an election official, the hardest parts of the "Forced re-election" affair was: * Not having any guidelines in the rules as to how a Forced re-election can be triggered, which is what Simon's suggestion is trying to address. * No guidelines as to how 20% is to be counted. - This led to us having to use a voting tool Helios as a petition tool which in turn caused a lot of confusion, especially as we had to have an election for a board resignation anyway. So there is definitely some thinking to be done. I personally like Simon's idea but would prefer rather than a fixed number like 10 we express it as a percentage of the membership. Taking approximately 500 members then 20% = 100 and 10 = 2%. I would feel 3 to 4% would be a better indication of real support. Also if we get the required number how is the 20% to be measured. At the moment the only tool we have is another petition, using Helios! In my mind I feel the ultimate solution would be some form of petition tool so members themselves can set up a petition, only open to members, and directly garner the 20%. This can then be vetted by the election officials and then addressed accordingly. The same tool could also be used to direct the direction of the project itself. That said there would have to be appropriate check and balances in the system to ensure it does not get "hijacked". Just some feedback for discussion... Cheers, Ariez ajv@opensuse.org On 25/11/2020 14:17, Simon Lees wrote:
Hi All,
Under "by a vote of the membership where 2/3 or more of the openSUSE members participating in the vote approve it. " I would like to propose an amendment to the Board Election rules (Note I rather then the board).
I believe that the events in the last year have shown a weakness in at least one part of the rules. With the upcoming regular election I believe this is as good a time as any to address this change.
The specific section I would like to modify is the following, I know others have spoken about making changes to some larger sections at some point but I believe this change is small and manageable in the current timeframe so I'd like to keep the discussions in this thread around this topic which is:
Forced re-election: If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
I believe that this is a very worth while concept, however the current phrasing has left enough ambiguity that in practice it was hard to organise cleanly. My personal view is that the people who authored this text expected that should this ever be needed that some form of basic petition or even just +1's to a mailing list thread would be done.
In practice it was decided that this would be too hard to verify and had some privacy concerns and as such the election officials decided to utilize our voting system which was a reasonable way to handle the situation under the current wording. However it now leaves us in a position where one or two people can call for such a vote that will cripple the project for several weeks. I don't believe this was the intent of the original wording as such I am proposing an alternative, this is still in draft form so I am happy to hear other peoples amendments and suggestions.
Forced re-election: 10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting a petition of non confidence in the board. If 20 per cent or more openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
The 10 is a number that I felt is reasonable i'd be open to going slightly up and down, its a bit of a balance if 20% of members are interested getting 10 to contact the election officials should be easy. At the same time it should be reasonably easy for election officials to verify 10 members by checking the membership list and sending an email to there registered email address asking for confirmation they sent the original email.
There was also some questions around the 20% rather then a 50% majority, My view is to leave this as is, if 20% of people call for a forced election it means there is quite some disagreement in the community, however the current board can run in the election so a different 50% of the community could still reinstate them.
My aim is to have a finalized version ready on the 8th of December (A week before voting starts) i'd welcome anyone and everyone's feedback anytime before then.
Cheers
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