Hello Wikimedians, We the Election Officials hereby clarify how votes from blocked accounts will be treated. This is not overruling anything previous, in our opinion, but is rather writing down of oral tradition of Election Officials. In the current Board Election, the Election Officials will count the votes from blocked users as follows:

1. Users indefinitely banned or blocked from any Wikimedia project may not vote in the Wikimedia Foundation Board elections. This means they may not vote using the blocked account or from any other account they may hold on a Wikimedia project.

2. Users temporarily banned or blocked from any Wikimedia project may not vote from the blocked or banned account for the duration it is blocked. However, they may vote from any other project on which they are eligible to vote, or they may vote after their block either expires or is removed if the election is still open.

3. Election officials may strike votes from users who do not meet the eligibility criteria described above. Officials may find disqualified voters by searching manually, by technical filtering (to be provided by developer(s) if possible), or by third-party reports (see the below).

4. Any Wikimedia user is invited to report questionable votes to the Election Officials. To ensure the authenticity of the reports, we highly recommend that bureaucrats or admins of a local wiki make the reports, and we appreciate the assistance of local wiki admins in checking such questionable votes. Admins of local wikis are welcome to report on projects other than the ones on which they are administrators; however, local admins are expected to be the most reliable source of such information.

Thank you for your input and ideas on this issue. We hope all eligible voters participate in the coming election starting September 1!

Wikimedia Election Committee, 2006 Essjay, Datrio, Aphaia