[Foundation-l] Notice from Election Officials: Clarification of vote eligibility of blocked accounts

[Aphaia]

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