Community Council/Items/Election Process

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This page is for review of propsed changes to the charter. The charter text that is published here is not approved.

Community Council Bylaws

Version 1.x

Last updated 2008-10-15

Council Election process

Status:proposal

approved on: not yet approved


According to the council charter (version 1.2) the all Council Members (but the Sun Staff Member) will be elected using an open process that respects the principles of democracy and meritocracy.

The detailed process for electing the members and the constituency for each category will be written in the bylaws but has to respect these basic rules:

  1. Each OpenOffice.org community member is eligible for election.
  2. The call for candidates will be published at an online resource which is accessible for every community member.
  3. Each community member is allowed to nominate candidates (including self-nomination).
  4. Each candidate is encouraged to introduce herself.
  5. Council members of the different categories will be elected by a corresponding constituency.

Process details

The Community Council is responsible for initiating and running the election process. The Council can appoint single tasks to any community member (not necessarily a Council member). Elections for the categories of representatives run separately but may happen at the same time. (Means although representatives from more than one category might be elected at the same time, each category has it's own “thread”).

General steps of the process

  1. Announcement of elections
    The elections are announced via mail on a public mailing list and include at least the following:
    1. Category of Council Representatives that is going to be elected
    2. Information about the constituency (category or detailed list of community members who are allowed to vote in the election)
    3. Number of Representatives that are going to be elected
    4. Time line of elections
    5. Call for candidates
    6. Name of the mailing list where candidates can be nominated
    7. Details about the election process (e.g. if elections will be held via mail or if a special tooling will be used)
  2. In a period of at least one week but not longer than two weeks after announcement candidates can be nominated at the mailing list that has been named in the announcement. Candidates need to agree to nomination within this period.
  3. For a period of another week, candidates can introduce themselves at the mailing list, esp. the ideas about their council work should be presented. This period may (and should) also be used to discuss nominations among community members.
  4. Voting will start right after this period with another announcement at the mailing list. Voting will be open for at least two weeks. Voting may be done via mail (on public list or private mail) or using a dedicated tooling. The Council needs to decide about the way of voting before the election process starts.
    In any case there is one responsible commissary for the voting who is in charge of running the process, making sure that the voting is correct, counting the votes and publishing the results. The commissary is assisted by two observers who can request details about the voting at any time and will review and approve the results.
    In case that one seat is elected, the winning candidate needs to reach simple majority (more than 50% of all votes). In case no candidate reaches simple majority, the commissary will initiate a second vote to select one of the candidates that got most of the votes in the first run. This second round will be started not earlier than one week and not later than two weeks after the first round. This second round will be open for two weeks.
    In case that more then one seats are elected in one election (n out of m candidates) “we do not know how to deal with that yet”
  5. Results will be announced by the commissary on a public mailing list not longer than one week after voting period. The announcement must include:
    1. Name(s) of the winners
    2. Full result table (including results for all candidates)
    3. approval of both observers

What happens if there is no single winner, what happens if we have not enough candidates or no candidate reaches enough votes?

Mailing list for the categories:

  1. Code Contributor Representatives
    dev@openoffice.org (project leads are encouraged to forward information to project specific lists, announcement should also happen on project-leads@openoffice.org)
  2. Product Development Representatives
    dev@openoffice.org (project leads are encouraged to forward information to project specific lists, announcement should also happen on discuss@openoffice.org and project-leads@openoffice.org)
  3. Lang Representatives
    dev@native-lang.openoffice.org (project leads are encouraged to forward information to project specific lists, announcement should also happen on dev@l10n.openoffice.org and project-leads@openoffice.org)
  4. Community Contributor Representative
    discuss@openoffice.org (project leads are encouraged to forward information to project specific lists ,announcement should also happen on dev@native-lang.openoffice.org and project-leads@openoffice.org)
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