These election announcements, with their talk of "tranches" and whatnot, are often a little confusing. Because this can be exploited for the purpose of increasing fear, uncertainty and doubt about Wikipedia, I thought I'd reply to a post depicting the election as "stolen" and Wikipedia as an incipient fascist state on Wikipedia Review as follows. I forward it here with minor editing because it's the clearest explanation of the voting process and the results I've yet seen.

http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=ge...

Well I'm not sure how much attention you paid to the election process, or whether you're aware of arbcom's history and function.

Jimbo has always claimed the right to appoint candidates, and regards the elections as a form of approval or endorsement of potential candidates. (see Signpost article: Election procedure poll). For the latest elections, Jimbo made two alternative proposals to the old method and held a straw poll to let the community indicate their preference between the old approval voting method and either of the two alternatives. The first alternative was for Jimbo to propose candidates and the community to indicate their approval or disappoval of each one with a 50% vote required to pass. The second alternative was a hybrid: the community could also put up candidates, with the same method of voting and the same 50% vote required to pass.

After discussion and straw polling, the second alternative was chosen.

This means that Jimbo effectively had a free choice from all candidates who made 50% or more in the poll. There were twenty-two such candidates. You will be pleased that the method was successful in weeding out candidates without wide community approval: Kelly Martin, Snowspinner and I are as controversial in the Wikipedia community as we are here and failed to make the necessary 50% approval.

For the Alpha tranche of four arbcom seats, to be re-elected in 2008, Jimbo chose the top four candidates by percentage of votes cast for and against:

New Alpha tranche appointees

* Filiocht 93% * Mindspillage 92% * Charles Matthews 89% * Morven 88%

Of the four gamma tranche arbcom seats, to be re-elected in 2007, Raul654 and Neutrality remain and their seats were not up for re-election this year. The other vacant places went to the two next highest polling candidates by votes cast:

New Gamma tranche appointees

* SimonP 87% * Dmcdevit 82%

Of the Beta tranche arbcom seats, to be re-elected in 2006, The Epopt and Theresa Knott remain and their seats were not up for re-election this year. The two vacant places went to the two next highest polling candidates by votes cast:

New Beta tranche appointees

* Sam Korn 78% * Mackensen 77%

This completely fulfilled the replenishment of the existing committee and all eight available places were appointed by Jimbo according to the approval of the community, as he had promised. Those who got the highest proportion of the vote got the seats with the longest remainng terms.

Jimbo then announced the appointment of one additional arbitrator to each tranche, as allowed by the hybrid proposal, as follows.

And then in the interests of expanding the committee and maintaining continuity, I'm also making the following appointments (all candidates met with community approval, percentages listed below):

Additional direct appointees (all approved)

* Alpha: JamesF 75.42% * Gamma: Fred Bauder 73.61% * Beta: JayJG 69.75%

On IRC last night, Jimbo explained his thinking on the new appointees:

"Yes, I looked at all the different factors, total number of votes, percentages but I was also concerned about experience on the arbcom and so for the 3 new seats, I thought: hmm, reappoint the experienced who were approved by the community to give continuity."

Fred Bauder, JamesF and JayJG are experienced arbitrators who were all up for re-election and had all gained well over the 50% approval threshold. The new seats will be up for re-election according to their tranche: JayJG in late 2006, Fred Bauder in 2007 and JamesF in 2008.