Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

You will note from my candidacy statement that I have not run for Council, and have only run for Board with the understanding that I would be little more than a passive participant for the first 5 to 6 months of the term. I've been rather blunt about that... as I have been with many things in the past. I suspect both will likely land me a solid 6th place (in a 5 person race...)

Even if I am elected, there will be 4 other Board members to do the heavier lifting. This coming term, like the one just past, is not a one man show. I have done several highly visible things, and been active on TMO and meetings. But other Council members have done quite a bit of work on behind the scenes items to get things where they are. This has been a real team effort, which I will actually miss, but I must break from it in order to remain sane (and employed) over the next few months.

I'm not sure what you're talking about with "rehashing"? The updates to the last cycle were quite minor, and there have been no major changes proposed that I'm aware of. The bylaws must be approved and established at the first meeting of the Board, for legality sake. That must happen regardless of who gets elected. Right now, minus a few small typographical issues (capitalizations mainly), it's pretty much ready to go, over a week ahead of time. :rolleyes:

As for candidates running for both positions... That is their prerogative, and I can not answer for them. To be honest, I suspected this would happen, but dealing with it in this way is still the best route, IMHO. It buys us at least 6 more months to see how things work out, and decide if we want to simply blend the two jobs together permanently. If so, great, if not, great. But that's something the community can decide later, when matters are less urgent. ;)

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Sure, that can be done. But it's the Board members who decide that (through the bylaws).


Yes, we have this odd situation that each of the 3 apparent council members are also candidates for the nonprofit Board. Personally, don't see much of a value now of keeping council as part of the nonprofit with so much overlap. The problems we have are resources and volunteers and time and money, not the number and variety of chairs at the nonprofit for people to sit in. Having different positions with different titles doesn't mean much if much of the same people are doing the work irregardless.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Time constrains are always worrying and every one of us has suffered, more or less, periods of disconnection due to personal issues or work load.

I'm having myself a few rough weeks at work and right now I'm not very active. That's why it's important to have enough volunteers for both groups, so we can share efforts and tasks.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

in the line of thought of Rob, why not drop all the Council versus Board discussion and just focus on the Community, whatever instance governing it being but a tool to lead it?

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Those not following it should read this thread for an interesting twist on the election.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

After considerable debate on the topic, the following has been decided by the Council, on a 3 to 1 vote:

Once someone has stood for nomination, they can not be removed from the ballot. They may step down from a position once elected, and/or make their stance clear before the election so others may choose not vote for them.

While I personally disagree with this decision, it leads us to the following path:

There are 3 nominated candidates for Council. This means those involved are promoted to Council without the need for election, since each would receive at least one vote, and there are 3 positions for 3 candidates.

This also means there are 6 nominated candidates for Board, of which 5 will be elected via a standard election. That election is being setup now, and should start in about 4 hours. If the election is not available before 00:00UTC, the voting will be extended by 24 hours to ensure all participants have at least 7 days in which to vote.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

you sure you need us to vote ?!? :rolleyes:

EDIT: this isn't directed at you personally, Woody, obviously...

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

I also agree with that. Throwing the hat into the ring is just as important as not throwing it. The people that nominate themselves should accept all responsibility of stepping down, just as the people who decided not to nominate can't change their mind later and hop in. It's only fair.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

While this issue is a blind spot in the existing rules, I'm not convinced the council has the power to decide it without a community referendum. Even so,

Brilliant, force power onto someone who says he doesn't want it, only yesterday tried to hold the elections hostage, and who in that very same meeting said:

Pardon me, but have you guys lost your minds?!

Well, since they bylaws haven't been finalised yet, what it means for the board is technically undefined.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Only fair? The two are rather different situations. If a person tries to jump in after nomination period closes (regardless of whether you're referring to me or not), then you could make an argument that they're abusing the system (my understanding is that the nominate/vote week gap is there so that everyone has time to contemplate the candidates, so you could argue the late-nominee is depriving the electorate of their ability to contemplate their nomination as well as they could those of the other candidates). If a candidate drops out, the voters are probably not going to have to change much, other than shift in the candidates that they liked less than the one that dropped out.

However, what 'fairness', exactly, does preventing someone from dropping out of a race, produce? It'll probably have a chilling effect on nominations, or acceptances thereof, because now god forbid your circumstances change and you can no longer run. But that will be minor.

The real problem, however, is that it's detrimental to the community AND the candidates. Now if candidate X wishes to withdraw, you have candidates Y and Z who are the only 'real' candidates, only not everyone /sees/ the stated intent of X to drop out of the race - so when time comes to vote, there will be vote leaching by the 'dud' candidate(s) from the 'live' candidate(s). Voters will be voting for candidates that they think are running, but who really have, for all intents and purposes, left.

(And in the extreme case that you have multiple candidates who decide they don't want to run anymore, you could get a council that was voted on as a 5 person council, but which suddenly becomes a 2 person council as soon as elections are over, because 3 of the elected candidates decided to drop out, but officially weren't removable from the list, until all the votes have happened.)

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

I wasn't at the meeting, and I don't think that vote correctly reflects my opinion - there was certainly no vote from me to have Joerg_rw as part of an election for Hildon Foundation Board.

I don't think it matters any more as he has recently withdrawn from the election:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=86

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Actually that was the point - they were voting on whether or not his withdrawal was valid, given that he already accepted the nomination earlier.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

SD69,

Can you clarify what is your opinion on both joerg_rw being part of Board elections as well as part of Council till he decides to step down...

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

At this point, I leave the question of maemo.org council and interpretation of those rules to others. As to the Hildon Foundation Board, I don't want joerg_rw to be part of it.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

thedead1440,
I won't and don't need to step down from council, since I've not officially been put into duty and role, and I clearly stated that I won't accept the nomination. This is the first vote I ever heard of where the candidates can't deny to accept election.

lma,
>> ...only yesterday tried to hold the elections hostage... <<
I'd demand clarification, if it wasn't so obviously nonsensical that it doesn't make any sense to even discuss this. If your BS claim of what I allegedly did would hold any truth, then obviously I have to have failed somehow since yesterday, since today obviously nothing is "held hostage". So what happened? Council decided they don't accept my withdrawal? And how T F is that holding the votes on hostage?

Ahh wait, it's been you who suggested I better p*ss off when I dare to withdraw (http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...5&postcount=45), how sound a rationale ;-P (Actually many thanks for that, I took it for what it been: the best suggestion of the last day, ivgalvez wasn't happy about my consequences I took just in your sense.)
Almost as sound a rationale as SD69 claiming I'd "abuse my position in council" that I just refused to accept. Honestly, you make my day, guys. Even without having to pay for a ticket to watch you.

For all of you who get so upset you obviously can't think straight anymore: Consider myself dead since yesterday, maybe that helps you to chill.

/j

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Sure, if it wasn't totally obvious I was referring specifically to

and

HTH, HAD

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Thanks, all my pleasure. I'd not want to be in a board where you are member. So the problem actually solved? naaah wait, you deliberately refused to accept my withdrawal. Now you have to live with the mess *you* (the [former?] council / board) created with your creative interpretation of election.rules. I guess that's a pretty good start for board, to shanghai candidates so you could hold a "proper" vote, just to kick those you shanghai'd, after you reached where you wanna get to.
LOL!

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Well, you are aware that extension of nomination period *might* have resulted in a real vote (actually, if fading council would follow election rules verbatim, it *must* result in real vote, since nothing else could solve a situation with 4 candidates), while SD69 refused to give a vote about council to you, the community? If you call my pushing for a real vote being held, well if you call that "taking it for hostage" then ... (/me searches for a dictionary he could wrap in nice colored paper and send it to lma. Honestly, you earned it, since you made me rethink if I could stand dealing with this idiocy for a full term)
*sigh*

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

@lma: joerg_rw has pointed out since then that this was, near as I can tell from his statements, something that council nominees had done in the past, to elongate elections. No election 'hostage-taking', certainly not on the level of his intent at least. Furthermore, he was only doing it for the council election - for which there was no rush to get the election done. In practice, only the board has to get elected as soon as possible.

@joerg_rw: SD69 just pointed out that, near as I can tell, he was not involved in the vote discussed, and that his vote got misrepresented? It sounds, given what he is saying, that he would've happily voted to accept your withdrawal, seeing as how he had no objection to it when linking to one of the posts where you stated that it happened. If we get this clarified correctly, doesn't that make the vote 2v2?

Because if I'm reading this line right:
(from the irc log woody linked to last page) , SD is SD69, correct?

If so, and he was actually in favor of accepting your resignation/withdrawal, then the vote was counted wrong. Without Jaffa's vote being counted, that's Woody/SD in favor of allowing withdrawal, Ivan/Niel against. 2v2, instead of 1v3. 'Hung jury'. And then we have the Jaffa vote for accepting withdrawal, which I didn't really get because he's not a councilmember, but woody did mention using him as a stand-in for Nokia rep:
And at that point balance is 3v2 in the other way.

That is of course if I understood SD69's position correctly?

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Mentalist, it doesn't make a difference, since nobody in council wants a vote. and what I blamed SD69 for was his actions yesterday, when he claimed I'd already be elected council member and thus impossibly can withdraw (since that would create more work for him, I guess). Anyway it's obvious that council gives a s**t about election rules, and they invent/bend/ignore them to all their liking, just to get their position established.
See ballots, there's obviously no problem at all with vote getting moot by delaying sending out ballots (again!!) past beginning of official voting period, and neither by postponing end of that voting period. But when there's a new candidate for council stepping up, it's all "BUT! BUT! THE **RULES**!!"

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

joerg_rw,

I understand your rationale but look at this way; woody has said the voting ballots were delayed twice by a day and both times it was due to technical issues. Secondly, Council took the step to question Jaffa about the situation as they too needed a clarification on the unusual scenario so isn't that a sign of them trying to be accomodating to all?

Let's try not to be too harsh on them and they might have at first been simply worried that this would set a precedent for any other voting matters like coding competition [there were 1 or 2 entries a few hours late this year which were rejected, IIRC] etc wrt late entries. After seeing the situation again they decided to consult Jaffa so not too bad isn't it?

All IMO only...

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

In my book that's rather "creative" interpetation of spirit and written words of council election rules, to ask Jaffa after *initial* nomination period if - rather than doing extension of nomination period - they rather could go for a council of 2.
And Jaffa, aiui, didn't opt for "the rules say if there are more than 5 on end of nomination period, elections have to start one week later. even if all candidates died in an airplane crash meanwhile" But that's basically how SD69 reads the rules, he'd no way extend nomination period and rather go with a council of possibly *zero* living candidates to vote, while 500 living and willing, though late candidates were just waiting to self-nominate if only they extended nomination period.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

you blackmailed the Council / Community by stating that you would withdraw you nomination as a candidate if / when Mentalist Traceur's (too) late self-nomination was denied.

since 9/11 hostage taking and similar act of terrorism are the felony but it doesn't make blackmailing a sinecure :mad:

this being clarified, what is your point now?

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Oh, so you're suggesting every mentioning of "either A or B" is blackmailing? When I ask the waiter "please get me the steak rare-medium, or if your kitchen can't do that, I'll take the spaghetti bolognese instead" that's as well blackmailing?

Honestly, please grow a brain, announcing a perfectly legitimate action is no blackmailing :-o WTF in any related regulations there's any rule that forbids me withdrawing my candidature?
For your convenience:
*) any sane interpretation of this rule would be to extend the validity of the if statement until the then statement actually takes effect, IOW "If at end of nomination or any later point in time until start of election there are fewer than 3..." However notice that council decided to take a shortcut to not run any vote, based on the (not entirely insane) rationale that with 3 candiidates there'll be no use in any vote - but still it's an invented made-up rule bending the verbatim regulations for council election. Declaring withdrawal an illegal move even more is, particularly if the purpose is to avoid proper application of the rule about "less than 3..." and nomination extension resulting from that

The reasoning of my initial withdrawal wasn't to blackmail or take hostage, but to help council to allow then do the right thing in spirit of election rules, rather than bend a rule (the one about nomination closing [edit]two weeks[/edit] before vote starts). Council however, for very obscure and non-disclosed reasons, decided to antagonise this idea by not going the golden bridge I built for them but rather invent new rules (withdrawal forbidden) and ignore/bend others (no council of less than 3 people, some other rules as well), just to establish a situation that's obviously the opposite of what rules were intended for (a council with preferrably 5 elected by vote members)

I'd rather question the legitimacy of current council's announcement of a 2 seats new council, without even bothering to explain how they came to think that's what the spirit and words of council election rules suggest should be done. To me it's pretty evident that all spirit of rules is to interpret them in a way so we get more candidates and finally maximum number of council members, rather than deliberately shortening the process by just ignoring/tweaking/inventing rules to not extend nomination period.

I wonder what's wrong with you guys here. You're seriously deranged to accuse me of criminal action.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

please stop this madness

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Please define "madness"

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

the only thing you are proving here is that your EGO is much more important to you then this community.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

for sure my SANITY is more important to me than YOU and your weird demonstrations of how you're not getting a single bit of all this. Chill, buddy, council elections are cancelled, they've been before I posted my initial post regarding mentalist and nothing changed since then and probably nothing will change, so all you can lose here is your opportunity to rage against my attempts to bring proper votes to community. I suggest you better ignore this thread since for you it's actually moot.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

you are not ordering from a "menu"...
you have been standing at the bar, barely able to keep up for too many hours, emptying one drink after the other picking a fight with every other guest and when the bar tender asks you to pay you start shouting
"not before i had another drink!"

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

MHM, yeah obviously.

So WTF is your point? Beyond trolling here?

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Eiish, I kinda get what joer's raging against, but really, I think it's somewhat misplaced...
I think everything the council's tried to do, has been in the best interests of the community at large.
Perhaps it's been bending proper process somewhat, but in times like this, we do need fluidity/flexibility sometimes.
I don't believe the insinuations in some posts, that there's some kind of conspiracy on their part, at least I hope not.
Why can't we all just "hug it out" and sing "Kumbaya my Lord"???? :-/

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

the argue who is right and who is wrong is madness, here we need to be nt right but we HAVE to be smart!

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

and i mean it for both sides, as i see it as small misunderstanding and few words got out here and there from both sides and then it was just to late to stop so we got here, but maybe it's time to stop and fix(or if someone doesn't care just to pass by and do not pay attention)

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

If I understand correctly (from the wiki) the Council voting has started.
If so when to we get our ballots?
I ask this question due to the fact I have a planned holiday for 8 days starting this evening (GMT)
I will be unlikely to get a internet connection while away.
While I understand that the process maybe delayed, when do we find out the new times/dates.

Last election I was very busy at work and had little time to check on TMO.
I noticed I recieved the ballot email the day after the voting closed. However the latest Coding Comp ballots came before the start day.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

You have a point there. On the other hand there is the danger of people nominating themselves just to buy time and just drop out in the gap week. That is firstly removing importance from the very action of self nomination, which I feel is not something one is allowed to play with, and secondly modifies the nominees behaviour in the following way:
People are busy and have real jobs, many of hem love the community and want to help but feel they don't have enough time so that they would be happy to leave the position to somebody else. Last minute, when there are no other candidates, they jump in because then it's clear that an extra perso will be a benefit however little time he can devote.

That is what I felt and replied that I agree. As for the late candidate reference read it like this: If you didn't allow a late candidacy (which I was in favour of if you read my previous comments) don't allow a late withdrawal.

But I see your points too and to be frank you maybe convinced me. I've got to weigh it again.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

>>to buy time?<< Sorry, could you elaborate on that, I don't understand the meaning. I'd like to learn if there's some point/concern I might have missed - I hoped the rest would already be obvious to everybody without mentalist traceur explaining it again. Maybe I was wrong there as well.

[sidenote] I've been jumped in by ivgalvez last minute, and I accepted since there were no other [edit: only 2 other] candidates at all until then, even while I had very little time to offer. See my original post where I accepted nomination. [edit: probably my big mistake been I didn't consider properly the effects of that *), since if I hadn't accepted that nomination by ivgalvez (which I did under pressure since late in nomination period) then the nomination period got extended anyway, and that's a good thing in my book] Now another candidate with obviously way better qualifications stepped up, and I felt it's only fair to allow community to get real vote of 3 out of 4 candidates, rather than excluding the late candidate and declare votes moot since there are only 3 men standing (one of them at least not really a good council candidate from beginning - me). The rest is history.
/j

*) [edit2] on second thought, iirc & according to woody's announcements there've been already THREE candidates at that point in time (http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...9&postcount=76), one of them "got withdrawn" after nomination period closed (due to pending karma recalculation turned out he's not eligible to stand). So basically I got tricked into thinking there'll be a proper vote for council if only I stand for council election (4 candidates! http://wiki.maemo.org/index.php?titl...ns&oldid=49999), and after nomination period closed, the other candidate got withdrawn and I'm not allowed to withdraw? Fine! Sounds absolutely fair¡

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Can I join the race?

I wants to be the hand of the King!

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

I have to apologize because I nominated joerg_rw for Council. I thought that a Council of two people would not be enough to face the technological issues of the infrastructure transition and that his technical background would be useful for that.

Obviously, I couldn't imagine the damage he would do to the process. I'm truly sorry.

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

Mentalist Traceur, apologies for pulling your response out of context (somewhat), but it's simply too funny ¦-)

Re: [Council] Maemo Elections (September 2012)
 

well, in fact it is very sad that ppl right now could only care about the procedural aspects of the election of the Council (or the Board, for that matter) :(
hopefully this tells something about the candidate... :mad: