Rules & Timeline for the GNOME Foundation 2021 Elections

Elections Rules

  1. See the GNOME Foundation Bylaws (PDF) for general rules.
  2. There are 3 board slots that are to be filled during these elections.
  3. Members of the GNOME Foundation as of 2021-06-01 are eligible to vote in the elections. Members without voting rights such as Emeritus members are not eligible to vote. Anyone who has made a contribution to GNOME can apply for membership by completing the application.
  4. Any eligible voter is eligible to be elected to the Board of Directors. To announce your candidacy, send a message to foundation-announce@gnome.org with your full name, e-mail, corporate affiliation (if any), and a description of your reasons for wanting to serve as a director. Candidacies must be announced prior to 2021-05-31, 23:59 UTC.
  5. All discussion related to the elections should be held on Discourse. Members are invited to ask questions to one or all candidates on that list.
  6. Instructions explaining how to vote will be sent via e-mail to all eligible voters on 2021-06-02, and votes must be returned by 2021-06-16, 23:59 UTC.
  7. Votes will be held confidential during the elections, but an anonymized archive of all submitted votes will be made publicly accessible at its conclusion.
  8. The GNOME Foundation Membership and Elections Committee is responsible for counting the votes. The committee serves at the pleasure of the GNOME Board of Directors as per Section 9.1 of the bylaws.
  9. This specific election run is the first one occurring after the following amendments were introduced to the Foundation's Bylaws. The aforementioned changes introduced the ability to only renew a subset of the available seats of the Board. The rationale of the changes and the historical information about these specific amendments can be found here. The candidates voted for most as counted by a single transferable vote system will be elected, except that no more than two individuals affiliated with any one corporation may be sitting on the Board as Directors during the same term. This holds true even in the case a subset of seats is up for renewal: as an example if X is affiliated with the Example Inc. and his/her seat is not up for renewal, the amount of possible candidates affiliated with Example Inc. that may be elected would be 1 (one). On top of that and as taken from the Foundation's Bylaws: "8.2.4: In the event that any election of directors results in a single entity representing greater than 40% of the Board, than the nominee representing that entity receiving the least number of votes, shall be replaced by the nominee receiving the greatest number of votes who was not elected to the Board." For a full definition of corporate affiliation, see the GNOME Foundation charter.
  10. In the event of a tie for the final slot on the board, the Elections Committee will schedule run-off elections as soon as possible.
  11. The Elections Committee will announce preliminary results as soon as possible after the elections close, along with instructions on how to access the votes archive and how to independently verify the vote count.
  12. Any eligible voter may challenge the preliminary results by e-mailing GitLab prior to 2021-06-24. The decision of the Elections Committee as to any challenge shall be final. Once any challenges have been resolved, the Elections Committee shall announce the final results.
  13. Any questions regarding these procedures should be directed to the Elections Committee by e-mail to GitLab. The committee shall have the power to make any necessary changes or clarifications to these rules at any point during the elections.

Timeline

(all deadlines are 23:59 UTC)