[Foundation-l] Future Board election procedures and guidelines

[Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)]

Let me add my congratulations to the successful candidates in the Board
election that just concluded, and my thanks to everyone who participated --
including all the candidates, my fellow election committee members, and the
voters.  (It feels odd in a wiki context to actually write "voters" rather
than ! voters. :) )

I have seen some references in this and other threads to people wanting to
discuss some possible changes to the way in which future elections are run,
based on lessons that we have learned this time.  This year, the Election
Committee members were selected only a few days before the election
timetable began, which meant that we had comparatively little time to
discuss the proposed election procedures before we had to get the process
moving.  Despite this, my opinion is that everything went reasonably
smoothly.

Nonetheless, and I emphasize that I am speaking here only for myself and not
officially on behalf of the Election Committee or anyone else, I think it
would definitely be a good practice to plan for future elections much
further in advance than we were able to do this year.

I suggest that there be an on-wiki dialog regarding some of the matters
concerning the Board Election procedures that contributors might (or might
not) want to change for future years.  The purpose would not be to have an
endless debate for the sake of debating, but to address concrete and
specific changes that might (or might not) be desirable, with a goal of
setting the parameters for future elections in advance.  The topics to be
addressed could include (but not be limited to):

(1) Voting system (approval voting versus other systems)
(2) Candidate and voter qualifications and the endorsement system
(3) Election publicity and communications

Although we have not decided this as a committee, I believe that most of
this year's Election Committee members would be willing to set up pages on
Meta and help to guide this discussion, if there is consensus here on the
list or elsewhere that this should be done.  It is unlikely that anything
much would happen until after Wikimania, but I think that it might be a good
idea to get any discussion going relatively soon while whatever issues arose
during this year's election are fresh in people's mind.  If we table the
discussion for too long, then I suspect it will stay tabled until the 2008
elections are just around the corner and next year's committee will find
itself in the same position that this year's did.

Everyone's thoughts will be appreciated.

Newyorkbrad