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

[James Cummings]

Hi all,

I had a look at opavote.org and ran a fake election with a bunch 
of my own email accounts. I can confirm what Peter suggested, 
that an election can be run with entirely secret voting in 
opavote where the person who set it up *cannot* know who voted 
for whom. The Chair running the election can see whether personX 
has voted or not, but not who for. Opavote has all sorts of 
features, but can set up a fairly simple vote or those which 
allow you to express your preference for candidates and their 
order. The ballots are entirely secret, the voters notified by 
email, and the final result of the ballot is open (but not who 
voted for who). So I think using that system the existing Council 
Chair can do it without any real impropriety. Do others strongly 
agree/disagree with that?

After listening to the various points of view so far my 
suggestion of a protocol is as follows:

1) Up until the last Friday in November, Council members for next 
year consider whether they want to run. Before that date they 
send a statement of some sort to the Council mailing list saying 
why people should vote for them.

2) On the first weekday of December, if multiple people are 
running, then the the Council Chair sets up an opavote.org 
election with the names of the candidates. This should have the 
following settings: Results only shown at end, "Instant Runoff 
Voting" method, a single winner, "ranked enhanced" ballot type, 
and candidate order shuffled.

3) The current Chair runs the election for at least 3 days in 
early December; results are announced publicly on Council list, 
and Council members given any chance to object before being 
announced on TEI-L

4) The current Chair hands over to the new chair almost 
immediately after the election, but assists them in planning for 
the next year until the end of the year.  (Remembering that in 
theory the current Chair might be departing off council at the 
end of the year, though that isn't the case this year.)

Improvements?

-James

On 30/10/13 11:49, Stefanie Gehrke wrote:
> Hi James,
>
>> Any additional, dissenting or agreeing, thoughts? New Council
>> members, how would you want it to work?
>
> I am fine with Fabio's proposals.
>
> Looking forward to building reliable relations and contributing to the work of the Technical Council.
>
> Kind regards
> Stefanie
>
>
> --
> Stefanie Gehrke
> ------------------------
> Coordinatrice Metadonnées - Equipex Biblissima
> Campus Condorcet
> 3 rue de la Croix Faron
> 93206 Saint-Denis Cedex
> Tél. : +33 (0)1 55 93 75 00
> www.biblissima-condorcet.fr
> @biblissima
>
> ----- Mail original -----
> De: "Fabio Ciotti" <fabio.ciotti at uniroma2.it>
> À: "Hugh Cayless" <philomousos at gmail.com>
> Cc: "TEI Council" <tei-council at lists.village.virginia.edu>
> Envoyé: Mardi 29 Octobre 2013 23:03:56
> Objet: Re: [tei-council] Electing a TEI Technical Council Chair for next	year.
>
> In general I think it would be nice to have a formal procedure since
> we cannot foresee if future composition of the Council could generate
> conflict (I guess not, but...), especially if there is more than one
> candidate.
>
> In my opinion
>
> 1) the person who organise and act as the scrutineer can be the the
> senior member (better than the current Chair since in theory he will
> have less conflicts of interests) if he is not standing for election;
> otherwise the Council can ask the Board to designate a member for that
> role.
>
> 2) direct mail is a viable solution to express votes, since the
> votings members are only 11, but also a doodle can work. We can avoid
> (or reduce) spamming keeping it open for just one or two days and
> giving the link in this mailing list only one day before.
>
> But if there is only one candidate and all the Council members feel
> fine with him (or more formally if no member of the Council explicitly
> ask for the voting procedure)  I agree with Hugh, we can proceed by
> acclamation. And finally, I am even less competent than Hugh, so I
> will not stand for election :-)
>
> Fabio
>


-- 
Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk
Academic IT Services, University of Oxford