Getting out the vote for the Fedora 10 election season

[Francesco Ugolini]

2008/10/1 Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com>:
> So what sort of things can we do? And when should we start doing them?

> As a start is there a general need to raise the awareness of the
> election and voting process we are using?
> Can we generate general interest material covering topics like:
> Why vote? How do you qualify for voting? What's this range voting stuff?

Personally I'm sure we have to give a clear answer on "Why vote?"
question. I'm saying it because we are a big community and we need to
motivate people taking action. To do that I suggest to use widely read
means, like announce list and so on.

> Community Q/A:

> It's sort of a two part problem. One we just need to get people out
> there to ask questions. I think this comes down to communicating why
> each election matters.  Can we do that as a marketing campaign? Can we
> "sell" the election process?
>
> And second, we need a way to organize those questions and resulting
> candidate answers so they are easily found. I've been talking to
> people specifically about how to organize some sort of community to
> candidate q/a.  Nigel seems to have taken the bait and has a plan on
> how to integrate community questions AND nominations into the voting
> app for all elections.

The idea is great, but all the candidates have to accept this one.

> Nominations:
> This was talked about a lot in the post-Board election fab discussion,
> and it was generally agreed that encouraging people to nominate others
> would help increase the candidate pool, because some people are not
> inclined to self-nominate. How do we go about encouraging people to
> nominate other people? I don't know exactly beyond blogging about it
> again.

Yes, it could help having more people in the election.

Personally I propose to give the time (a week?) to the people who want
to invite other ones to join the electoral process, maybe we could do
this trough our  lists/blogs/etc. Then each person, after seeing
people backing him, will take the responsibility to add himself in the
Wiki with all the other candidates. I think it's the most logical
process we could have.

> IRC Debate:
> Another idea floating around is organizing a candidate debate for each
> election.  I can't take credit for this idea.  It should be doable. My
> main concerning is how to generate the questions/topics for a debate
> format.  This loops to my personal focus on trying to find a way
> generate questions from the community for candidates to answer.   If
> you've got an idea on how to run a candidate debate for any of the
> elections, feel free to chime in.

IRC Debates sounds great! Maybe, as you said, it would be usefull to
find the right way to hold a IRC Debate. Personally I think the only
thing to guarantee is that each candidate could have his/her time to
explain himself, with a max limit.

BTW, less rules, less problems :)

> Meet the Candidate Videos:
> If candidates wanted to make introductory videos can we organize a
> space for candidates videos that makes it easier for people to find?

I think if 100% of the candidates could make such video (potentially)
it's a reasonable idea, but as today I'm not sure everyone could have
a camera. We can take the decision to make something like EventBox: a
camera that is shipped around the world, but it surely will take a lot
of time.

Finally:

I agree to have a Q/A with people and candidate and an IRC debate (by
project). I approve if we give a week to people to invite someone to
nominate himself, and, if there is a way to give all the people that
chance, to produce some candidate videos.

Personally I'm sure we have to guarantee that everyone could have the
same rights: to do this all the initiatives that will be taken for
those elections will have to be designed to fit everyone.

Best regards

Francesco Ugolini

p.s. I think we have to use, like the past election, a wiki page where
all the candidates nominate themselves and give the reason why they
are doing that. That's one of the best way to understand why a person
will nominate him/herself.