On 24 Jan 2009, at 23:06, James Farrar wrote:
2009/1/24 Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>:
2009/1/24 James Farrar
<james.farrar(a)gmail.com>om>:
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