[tei-council] Electing a TEI Technical Council Chair for next year.

[Hugh Cayless]

Given the current makeup of the Council, I don't see any reason to build in conflict resolution mechanisms ahead of time. We might just make it a policy that in the case of a disputed/contentious election, the Council will ask the Board to supply a returning officer. Is there any reason direct email to that individual cannot constitute a vote?

We should probably also figure out whether anyone besides James wants to run (I certainly don't feel competent to after only a year on Council). If not, I think you might just win by acclamation. :-)

Hugh

On Oct 29, 2013, at 14:00 , James Cummings <James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

> 
> I have no problem with the current board representative (Lou) 
> doing this, or Sebastian who also volunteered as a returning 
> council member. (My only worry is that both of them may be seen 
> as being related to Oxford... but well what can you do.)
> 
> I think everyone getting doodle logins would be problematic, just 
> the kind of complication I think we want to avoid.  If we put the 
> link publicly on the tei-council mailing list, then yes, anyone 
> in the world could fill in Martin Holmes as the name, and vote 
> for me. But if there are *two* Martin Holmes who have voted then 
> presumably the person acting as returning officer will notice 
> that and email Martin and say "Oi! Did you vote twice, or who do 
> you really want to vote for?" Or something like that.  i.e. it is 
> only a problem if someone out there does try to do something 
> nasty and someone who should vote doesn't vote. (And we should 
> make it an assumption that all  2014 council members *should* vote.)
> 
> I can see that who voted for who maybe should remain secret, with 
> just totals given.
> 
> Any additional, dissenting or agreeing, thoughts? New Council 
> members, how would you want it to work?
> 
> -James
> 
> On 29/10/13 17:40, Martin Holmes wrote:
>> I think this needs to be an electronic poll, because we can't assume
>> we're ever going to be able to all meet in person. I see no objection to
>> Doodle, assuming we don't think impersonation would be an issue. Perhaps
>> we should all be required to get Doodle logins and make these available
>> to the organizer ahead of time, so the poll could be limited to those
>> users, rather than the open system we use for meeting times where we
>> just fill in our names.
>> 
>> The person to organize it could perhaps be the board representative, who
>> is non-voting, so would presumably be the most objective of us.
>> Alternatively, the organizer could be the outgoing Chair _except_ when
>> that person is standing again, in which case it could be the board rep.
>> 
>> I'm not sure about transparency of voting. With the current Council
>> membership I can't imagine any conflict arising, but we should perhaps
>> plan on the basis that future Councils might be more contentious than we
>> are now, so perhaps who voted for who should be secret.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Martin
>> 
>> On 13-10-29 10:10 AM, James Cummings wrote:
>>> Dear TEI Technical Council,
>>> 
>>> As you know in its desire to become more fully transparent and
>>> representative body the TEI Consortium has moved to being wholly
>>> elected and removed the position of institutional 'partners' on
>>> the TEI Board.  Although I was originally elected to the Council
>>> for the last year I've been 'Appointed' by the Board and I was
>>> eager to do away with appointed positions and because the bylaws
>>> were changing stood for election and was re-elected.
>>> 
>>> One of the tasks for the incoming TEI Technical Council for 2014
>>> is to elect itself a chair as per the description at:
>>> http://www.tei-c.org/About/bylaws.xml#body.1_div.3_div.3 which
>>> says that:
>>> 
>>> "The Chair of the Technical Council shall be elected by the
>>> voting Members of the TEI-C Technical Council from its membership
>>> and shall serve as the chief technical officer of the Consortium.
>>> If no Technical Council Member is able or willing to assume the
>>> chair, the Technical Council may request the Board of Directors
>>> to second one of its elected members to the role, or it may
>>> nominate a non-elected individual."
>>> 
>>> The bylaws are intentionally vague on *how* we do this since they
>>> wanted to leave it in control of the Council and Board to sort
>>> themselves out and not be required to use any particular election
>>> method. I would be interested in Council (new, returning, and
>>> departing) coming to at least a vague consensus of how they think
>>> this should take place.
>>> 
>>> I believe that we should have the election _before_ the end of
>>> the year so that the new chair can start sorting out things for
>>> next year, that we want a simple procedure (since we'll be
>>> repeating this each year). I'm in favour of it being as open as
>>> possible, but perhaps not until after the last vote is counted
>>> (since we don't want one person's vote to influence others)?
>>> 
>>> Things I guess we need to know:
>>> - Who from the new/returning group wishes to stand for election?
>>> (I can tell them more about what it is like) I'm intending to
>>> stand but equally don't want to discourage others if they are
>>> keen to do it.
>>> 
>>> - Would something like a 'hidden poll' on Doodle be sufficient,
>>> if the results (should it be who voted for who or just aggregate
>>> numbers?) were posted publicly on the mailing after? An example
>>> of one of those might look like
>>> http://www.doodle.com/a9fqvskmq5mxexqn Would that be good enough?
>>> 
>>> - We need someone to act as the person to organise things (e.g.
>>> the poll) and while I'd usually suggest this be the current
>>> Council Chair I think there is a perceived conflict of interest
>>> if someone intending to stand does this. (I'd be honest,
>>> ya'know...of course, but it is about perception ;-) ) This could
>>> be anyone on Council, but maybe someone from the existing Council
>>> who is not returning? Or two people... etc.
>>> 
>>> I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts. If we can come to a vague
>>> consensus of _how_ you want it to work then I'll put it on the
>>> TEI-Council-FAQ.
>>> 
>>> -James
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk
> Academic IT Services, University of Oxford
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