{"id":1370,"date":"2009-01-27T15:55:45","date_gmt":"2009-01-27T05:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2016-08-22T15:02:49","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T05:02:49","slug":"itwire-linux-australia-election-results-are-in-but-is-there-a-mandate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/27\/itwire-linux-australia-election-results-are-in-but-is-there-a-mandate\/","title":{"rendered":"iTWire &#8211; Linux Australia election results are in &#8211; but is there a mandate?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20100117052919\/http:\/\/www.itwire.com:80\/content\/view\/22871\/1141\/\">iTWire &#8211; Linux Australia election results are in &#8211; but is there a mandate?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I mostly disagree with the conclusions drawn by David here.<\/p>\n<p>On voter turnout, this year we were consistent with previous years (see previous graphs, and reproduced below):<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"historical number of votes\" src=\"http:\/\/spreadsheets.google.com\/pub?key=pvD6nw6CQOO4533EgoDYvaw&amp;oid=1&amp;output=image\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"320\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve even been on a (slow) increase. How do we increase this number though?<\/p>\n<p>There are also other factors as to why people didn&#8217;t vote:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Happy with any combination of candidates (this was voiced at the AGM)<\/li>\n<li>Not aware of voting timeframe, or in the middle of LCA prep\/travel (how do we deal with this? Longer voting time? automated pestering of people via email from the membership system?)<\/li>\n<li>No\/limited choice in executive positions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If we look at the people standing for positions over the years (reproducing this graph from previous post):<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"number of candidates\" src=\"http:\/\/spreadsheets.google.com\/pub?key=pvD6nw6CQOO4533EgoDYvaw&amp;oid=2&amp;output=image\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"365\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s quite possible to assume that many people are happy with who&#8217;s standing for executive, and not too worried about OCM positions.<\/p>\n<p>There is also no way to express &#8220;I&#8217;m happy with any combination of candidates&#8221; in the election system. The query for &#8220;number of members voted&#8221; (see <a href=\"http:\/\/bazaar.launchpad.net\/~stewart\/memberdb\/0.6\/annotate\/371\/authenticated\/election-result.inc\">the source<\/a>. incidently, i wish launchpad let you link to line numbers):<\/p>\n<p><code>$result\u00c2\u00a0=\u00c2\u00a0$dbh-&gt;query(\"select\u00c2\u00a0count(distinct\u00c2\u00a0member_id)\u00c2\u00a0as\u00c2\u00a0count\u00c2\u00a0from\u00c2\u00a0election_vote\u00c2\u00a0where\u00c2\u00a0candidate_id\u00c2\u00a0in\u00c2\u00a0(select\u00c2\u00a0id\u00c2\u00a0from\u00c2\u00a0election_candidate\u00c2\u00a0where\u00c2\u00a0election_position_id\u00c2\u00a0in\u00c2\u00a0(select\u00c2\u00a0id\u00c2\u00a0from\u00c2\u00a0election_position\u00c2\u00a0where\u00c2\u00a0election_id=\".$election['id'].\"))\");<\/code><\/p>\n<p>So if you didn&#8217;t vote for anybody, you&#8217;re not counted in having voted. Patches are welcome to fix this :)<\/p>\n<p>If it&#8217;s uncontested, then many people just don&#8217;t put a 1 in the box. New MemberDB releases (what we&#8217;re likely to use for next year) have a drop-down menu of numbers, which may result in less of this. It could also be a few votes against the candidate &#8211; in the absence of another choice (or the voter choosing to stand themselves). In any of these scenarios though, it&#8217;s not a significant number of votes &#8211; all candidates got an overwhelming majority of votes.<\/p>\n<p>I also feel that somebody joining the council who is *not* a new face is a very big plus. We want (and indeed need) people who understand the organisation.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d also like to contrast our 66 voting members to the <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20080819030810\/https:\/\/www.acs.org.au\/acsnet\/documents\/15thAGMNov2006DraftMinutes.pdf\">2006 ACS AGM<\/a> with only 26 voting members present and the <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20091018072117\/http:\/\/www.acs.org.au\/attachments\/16th_AGM_Nov_2007_Draft_Minutes.pdf\">2007 ACS AGM<\/a> having 40 voting members present. I was unable to find out details on how many people voted for board members though&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>So I don&#8217;t think Linux Australia is in a bad place with having 66 people voting&#8230; I just think it could be better.<\/p>\n<p>Do we have a mandate? Well&#8230; it&#8217;s mind-numbingly simple to stand for council &#8211; get one other person to nominate you and nominate yourself. The fact that nobody has is a sign it itself (and we do have active members and the broader community watching us).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>iTWire &#8211; Linux Australia election results are in &#8211; but is there a mandate? I mostly disagree with the conclusions drawn by David here. On voter turnout, this year we were consistent with previous years (see previous graphs, and reproduced &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/27\/itwire-linux-australia-election-results-are-in-but-is-there-a-mandate\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[624,627],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux-aus","tag-linux-aus","tag-memberdb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5a6n8-m6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1794,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/13\/linux-australia-voting-history-incl-2010\/","url_meta":{"origin":1370,"position":0},"title":"Linux Australia Voting History (incl 2010)","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2010-02-13","format":false,"excerpt":"The voting count for the election in 2010 is well and truly in. Here's the number of voters over the years:","rel":"","context":"In &quot;linux-aus&quot;","block_context":{"text":"linux-aus","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/linux-aus\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Linux Australia Voting History","src":"http:\/\/spreadsheets.google.com\/oimg?key=0Ar7e3-N2Y32IcHZENm53NkNRT080NTMzRWdvRFl2YXc&oid=3&v=1266040022727","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1343,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/13\/linux-australia-voting-is-open\/","url_meta":{"origin":1370,"position":1},"title":"Linux Australia Voting is open!","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2009-01-13","format":false,"excerpt":"Voting for the Linux Australia Council for 2009 is open! Voting is open until 19:00 on 23\/1\/2009. Results will be announced at the Linux Australia AGM at linux.conf.au 2009 (make sure you're going, it's going to be awesome!) Head to https:\/\/www.linux.org.au\/membership\/ to cast your vote.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;linux-aus&quot;","block_context":{"text":"linux-aus","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/linux-aus\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1363,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/26\/linux-australia-election-numbers-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":1370,"position":2},"title":"Linux Australia election numbers (again)","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2009-01-26","format":false,"excerpt":"With the final total of how many people voted in the 2009 election added: How can we get more participation? Not have voting around LCA? Have a \"I think any combination of candidates are acceptable\" option?","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/spreadsheets.google.com\/pub?key=pvD6nw6CQOO4533EgoDYvaw&oid=1&output=image","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1345,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/13\/history-of-voting-in-linux-australia-council-elections\/","url_meta":{"origin":1370,"position":3},"title":"History of voting in Linux Australia Council elections","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2009-01-13","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the past few years (since we've been using MemberDB) total number of members voting has looked like this: So what does this tell us? Err... Nothing much. Except that we should probably expect about 60-70 votes for this election. If we look at how many candidates we've had for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;linux-aus&quot;","block_context":{"text":"linux-aus","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/linux-aus\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Year:Members voted - 2005:57, 2006:110, 2007:63, 2008:65","src":"http:\/\/spreadsheets.google.com\/pub?key=pvD6nw6CQOO4533EgoDYvaw&oid=1&output=image","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":984,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/13\/running-for-president-of-linux-australia\/","url_meta":{"origin":1370,"position":4},"title":"Running for President (of Linux Australia)","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2008-01-13","format":false,"excerpt":"The other day, I accepted the nomination for President of Linux Australia in the upcoming election. The following, is the spiel I've put up to help make my case for electing me: Hi, I'm Stewart Smith and I want to be the president of Linux Australia in 2008. I have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;linux-aus&quot;","block_context":{"text":"linux-aus","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/linux-aus\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":342,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2005\/01\/16\/preliminary-election-results\/","url_meta":{"origin":1370,"position":5},"title":"Preliminary election results","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2005-01-16","format":false,"excerpt":"Linux Australia members can log into the membership site and view the preliminary results of the 2005 election.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;linux-aus&quot;","block_context":{"text":"linux-aus","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/linux-aus\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4151,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/4151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}