[Talk-us] OSMF AGM election results

[Alan McConchie]

Richard, thanks for the great work you and the other election monitors did to make this election run so smoothly. And thanks particularly for your series of blog posts explaining how STV (the Single Transferable Vote) works.

I’ve been a supporter of election reform for a long time (something acutely needed in the US, Canada, and the UK) and STV is by far the best and most practical system I’m aware of. It was a pleasure to get to use it in this OSMF election.

I’m fascinated by the chart you posted [1] that shows how the votes transferred through each round of voting. It’s interesting to compare the candidates’ manifestos and look for “coalitions" of voters who transferred their votes between candidates with similar platforms. One of the great things about STV is that similar candidates don’t have to worry about stealing votes from one another. STV also discourages negative campaigns, because candidates want to gain their competitors’ 2nd and 3rd votes (and so on). Therefore, candidates are less likely to make personal attacks against their competitors. Given all the other chaos and strife that was going on with the OSMF leading up to the election, and also because STV is a new addition to OSMF’s electoral process, it’s too hard to say if STV had any meaningful positive impact on the tone of this election. Maybe we can say more in future years.

I would love it if we adopted STV for the OSM US elections. Has there been any discussion about that in the past?

[1] http://weait.com/sites/default/files/board-2014.png <http://weait.com/sites/default/files/board-2014.png>

Alan

> On Nov 9, 2014, at 6:42 AM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
> 
> The OpenStreetMap Foundation held the 2014 AGM yesterday including
> votes on several matters including the election to the board.
> 
> The results are summarized on the wiki. Official results will be on
> the Foundation web site in future.
> 
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM14
> 
> I've added some background on STV (voting method) because it is the
> first time I have been involved in it.  Learn along with me at my site
> http://weait.com  in several recent articles and several more on the
> way.

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