On 24 Jan 2009, at 23:06, James Farrar wrote:
2009/1/24 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2009/1/24 James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com:
My past experience as a returning officer, as a candidate, and as a candidate's agent in elections suggests that allowing candidates or potential candidates a running commentary of candidates standing negatively influences the fairness of an electoral process - and this is particularly true when only a subset of potential candidates is getting this information.
I don't think you can keep that kind of information from the board. The board are responsible for holding the AGM and running the election correctly, they need to know what is going on.
Then why appoint a Teller or Tellers independent of the Board?
Because the board members, if standing for re-election, have a vested interest in the outcome. An independent person taking the lead in the election helps avoid that vested interest becoming a problem. At the same time, the board needs to be sure that everything is going correctly and smoothly with the election.
That said, I can see how information on the candidates is useful to other candidates - for example, what goes into candidate statements. An alternative approach might be to do something similar to the last elections, having candidate statements etc. on a wiki page, although this would have to be done informally. Or candidate statements could be sent solely to the teller(s) separate from the rest of the information.
Mike