Future FESCo Elections

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Mon, 2006-07-24 at 14:22 -0400, Elliot Lee wrote:
> I agree with a lot of the points made, but I think it's important to  
> look at this in perspective:
> 
> 	The main reason for having elections is to pick managers & leaders  
> (the two are not the same).
> 	The Fedora Extras project is much smaller than, say, a country :) So  
> the elections should be much less of a deal.
> 	In a perfect world we would only have elections when the current  
> FESCO was not doing a good job.
> 	In this real world, there is still no need to have an election if  
> there are not more non-contingent candidates than there are positions  
> to fill.
> 

Very true.  however, there is one other reason to hold elections -- to
legitimize the regime^H^H^H^H^H^H governing body :-)

I think in the wake of the decision that the Fedora Foundation was going
to cause too many fiscal and legal problems, this was the strongest
reason motivating non-FESCo members to ask for an election.  To reafirm
the community aspect of the Fedora Project.

My impression is also that the strongest reason from within FESCo was
the feeling that FESCo could be doing more things with new members that
had a fresh outlook and more time and energy to devote to pushing
projects.  

So in this case the perfect world needs and the political needs of the
community coincided.  A new question would then be: how do we balance
voter burnout (why do we vote all the time?) with feeling of community
control (why haven't we voted in a long time?) and the efficiency of
FESCo (replace people too often and they spend all their time trying to
get elected rather than running the project) with burnout (replace them
infrequently and they begin to have more important things to work on and
stop participating.)

> 	When you have a project as full of smart people as Fedora is, the  
> differences between candidates will be
> 	very minor, so the incentive for people to vote and take part will  
> be very small. There's also probably the perception
> 	(correct or not) that not much is at stake in the FESCO election,  
> which also minimizes the incentive to participate.
> 	In particular, we should make it clearer why people would choose to  
> vote for one candidate versus another. If it
> 	doesn't matter which one you vote for, there's no point in having an  
> election, and we are just all running around
> 	trying to play model UN. :)

Yeah -- I definitely see this.  OTOH, having scheduled elections as the
traditional method of changing FESCo membership means that when there
are larger issues, there is an established method for effecting change.
So maybe we should have elections on a non-disruptive timescale and not
worry about low voter turn-out; it just means we're making choices that
the voters generally agree with.

> Here are the things that could be done:
> 	. Do better messaging around the election. Tell voters and potential  
> candidates why participating matters - what's at stake?

What is at stake?  In general, elections will make sure the community
has a voice and get fresh participants to drive forward new issues in
FESCo.  In particular, an election is probably about the issues that
concern the individual candidates as their the ones who will be driving
proposals forward.

> 	. Don't hold elections too often - it sucks time away from more  
> important stuff

Would yearly elections where all seats are up for grabs be better?
Having 6 month elections means people have to interrupt their workflow
twice a year even if their seat isn't up for election.

> 		. Maybe only hold elections when
> 	. Focus on recruiting & retaining people as Fedora Extras  
> contributors, because poor election turnout may be a sign of  
> generally bad project health. (Or a healthy project that is too  
> dependant on a few key contributors...)

That would be worrisome.  The question is can we tell this from the
election results?  Maybe it is a separate issue.  Or maybe having
elections is an attempt to retain contributors by giving them a voioce
in the decision making process.

-Toshio
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