[Foundation-l] Board election to use preference voting

[Jesse Plamondon-Willard]

Hello,

The 2008 board election will use preference voting, so that voters can
rank candidates by order of preference. Voters do not need to rank
every candidate, and can assign the same preference to multiple
candidates if they don't prefer one over the other. This system
ensures that the result most accurately represents the preferences of
the voters. (For reference, previous elections used approval voting,
where voters cast support votes for candidates and those with the most
votes won.)

Technical details:
The election will be counted using the Schulze
method<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method>, with winning
votes as the default measure for the strength of pairwise defeat.
Margins will be used as a backup measure for tie breaking during the
selection of the critical paths. The election software is based on the
boardvote extension written by Tim Starling, rewritten for preference
voting and updated by Kwan Ting Chan (election committee member) for
this election.

For more information on the election, see
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008>. To ask
questions, see <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2008>
or post on this list.

For the election committee,
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)