Last year the community voted that way putting diverse candidates at 5th and 6th position because the election method could not work properly, even assuming (as it was) a general attempt of diverse choice by the electorate. The main issue was in the low threshold for the candidatures. As soon as I figured out with a simple set of simulations I tried to warn and I was semi-harassed on the telegram chat. One person told me to shut up because I did not understand how STV worked, another one accused me of being in bad taste.
However, my analysis was probably right. I expected the output to be gender balanced but not geographically balanced because of dispersion among candidates. Unfortunately people were probably too ideologically oriented by how good STV system was and how great was to have so many candidates. Just to be clear, I don't dislike STV, but at least I understand how to simulate an election. If you want to use STV for a diverse output, put a clear selection of candidates after studying how people usually vote.
In general, this community has no literacy on electoral process but more importantly, it does not want it. That's why discussing this topic seems almost useless. People could mix up everything together, sometimes they just take a concept and put it to the extreme.
The direct elections was poor because of the lack of understanding of the voting behavior. I am sure even now somebody thinks we have elected so many "white people" because of the "racist" (or more nuanced adjective) electorate, but it would have happened with an honest attempt of diversity by voters, which I think it actually occurred.
As for this issue, these other seats with this system. in the end it looks that the power of the generic users might have increased, we are switching probably from a totally affiliate-oriented election to an election where the community in one step of the process cast a vote in a open at-large election which is generally good. If you have a good selections of candidates, the result might be balanced.
The ASBS2019 election was already an improvement enlarging the electoral base, it was more transparent and public the previous elections of affiliates seats, but it still had to face some issues. One is that some affiliates cast the actual vote among few people with no real participation of their members (even suggesting them to at least inform their members they were casting a vote was "too much"), the other one that a small fraction of active users could be more involved in the process in two or more UGs.
Giving a power of selecting candidates and not final votes to affiliates force them to care more about that step, producing convincing figures while the at-large election still has some issues but it's more democratic for the final choice. It might work, if correctly calibrated.
One issue of the at-large elections is the threshold for candidates, but delegating to the affiliates might
lead to both strong and diverse options, without excessive dispersion.
Another issue of the at-large elections are the votes of institutional account that are not properly handled. Usually people here make some weird comparison about civil servants voting but it has nothing to do with it. You just expect people to reach voting right by themselves and not as a result of c.o.i paid activity, and you should be more careful about it in the case of close results. If the internal process of affiliates select the candidates, than that would be a good moment to decide the weigh of this type of votes at the next step if it's an at large election. Again, you probably don't want to deal with this problem with a close call.
In any case, again, electoral literacy is hard, while taking one concept and enlarging it for a "soapbox moment" is easy. just to clear I have nothing against one position or another per se. For example I disagree with the merge of the two types of seats because it might lead to some functional results if correctly handled but for sure with the strong ideological positions we face, it can only lead to more chaos. So far, I might say that both processes might end up to more open globally than in the past. Although they could have been much better.
Like everything, we will deal with the data at the end for those who want to care.
Alessandro