[maemo-community] Announcing timeline for March 2010 Community Council elections

[From: Dave Neary]

Hi all,

I have just published a provisional timetable for the March 2010
elections, including two changes to previous elections worth pointing out.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council/Council_election_Q1_2010

The election timetable for the next Community Council election is (all
deadlines are set at 23:59 UTC):

    * February 10: Election announced
    * March 2: Deadline for karma for electorate
    * March 2: List of potential candidates published
    * March 2: Nominations open
    * March 16: Nominations close
    * March 17: List of candidates announced
    * March 23: Voting opens
    * March 30: Voting closes
    * March 31: Results announced

The first change is that I've fixed March 2nd as the deadline for karma
calculations for the electorate this year - we have always had a delay
between the date the voting was supposed to open & the date that it
actually opened, because we needed to extract the users from the
maemo.org database, format them properly & filter on karma, and then
generate the mail data to send tokens & insert the electorate into the
election database. That process takes a few hours, since it involves 2
different people, so we typically have a frantic rush to get the
election underway when we say it will be.

The second new addition is a week between the close of nominations and
the opening of voting for the election. Again, there's always been a lag
between the nominations closing & the creation of the election, and I've
been a little frustrated that there hasn't been more debate &
discussion of the relative merits of the candidates in the run-up to
elections - since voting starts straight after candidates declare, and
most candidates come in at the last minute, there isn't really time.

I think these 2 minor changes will make the election process run
smoother, and allow for a better election, and having run them past the
council, I'm sure that the community as a whole will find them positive too.

Since we're announcing the election dates now, anyone who does not yet
have 10 karma, or hasn't let linked their maemo.org and talk.maemo.org
accounts, now has a few weeks to do so before the election process starts.

Thanks for your attention!

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
maemo.org docsmaster
Email: dneary at maemo.org
Jabber: bolsh at jabber.org