Election process (was re: [rpd] AFRINIC Board Elections - 2014: Call for Nominations)

[Douglas Onyango]

Hi Seun, et al,
Sorry I am joining the party  late, but given my experience on the
Nomcom, my few cents are inline:

On 8 May 2014 09:05, Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji at gmail.com> wrote:
> - The electronic voting is starting before getting the opportunity to hear
> from the contestants. In view of this, does it mean
> 1. There will be no time when the contestant will speak to the community
> (i.e the only information posted on the website is what will be used for
> both at online and f2f voting)

My recollection is that the comment period, and the feedback form
specifically is designed to allow pre-f2f online engagement . It is
Nomcom's expectation that by the time of the f2f, the electorate
should have interacted via this platform to form an opinion on the
candidate. It is also for this reason that the speech at the f2f is
trimmed to a minuscule 2 or so minutes.

> 2. The speech of the contestants will be uploaded before the electronic
> voting starts and further speaking opportunity awarded to contestants
> present at f2f

In the past, recorded speeches have only been for candidates who are
not at the f2f in person and as such this is not available to the
public until the other candidates are speaking -- typically minutes
from the voting.

> - The closing date for the online voting has been set to end before f2f; as
> mentioned in the last AGM why does the online voting have to close earlier
> than the f2f voting?

The online vote has to be tallied and our current procedure specifies
that the tallying happens before the elections which makes sense if
you asked me because three trustees have to unlock the votes with
their private keys around the same time. Leaving this until the paper
ballot is tempting fate: Internet connectivity or one of the trustees
may just not be present. This can jeopardize the entire exercise as
there might not be enough time to fix the issue.

On 8 May 2014 14:48, McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:
> If I recall correctly, there is only one person (the CEO) who is able
> to obtain the results
> of the e-vote and he does this just before the f2f vote.

Not entirely accurate. The online voting system is designed such that
the result is unlocked and tallied by three trustees. These
individuals have to validate the result and as such have knowledge of
it.

Regards,