[AFS3-std] Call for Votes

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

This is the official call for votes that begins the first election of
chairs of the AFS3 Standardization Group, which ends on September 7, 2010
at 23:59 UTC.  Below you will find some information about decisions the
vote-takers have made about the election process, a list of candiates, a
restatement of the election timeline, and information on how to vote.
Please read through this entire message before sending your vote.


*** Process

Because the elections process has never been used or tested before, there
are inevitably some gaps which need to be filled.  Additionally, we feel
the circumstances of bootstrapping call for special handling which is not
fully spelled out in the provisional charter.  Therefore, the vote-takers
have taken several decisions regarding the process for the present election
_only_.  It is our hope that once the election is concluded and chairs are
installed, the group will take what we have learned (and what we will
learn) into consideration when formulating its initial charter.  The
decisions we've taken are as follows:

- Each eligible voter gets only a single ballot, even if he or she has
  multiple email addresses appearing in the list of eligible voters.
  For example, even though <jaltman@secure-endpoints.com> and
  <jaltman@your-file-system.com> both appear on the list posted on
  August 3, Jeffrey Altman only gets one ballot.  If one voter sends
  more than one ballot, the latest one will be used.

- Only humans are eligible voters.  Any archiving or gateway services
  appearing on the voter list, such as <archive@mail-archive.com>, are
  not eligible to vote.

- Naturally, only ballots from eligible voters will be counted.
  However, a ballot will not be discarded solely because it comes from
  the "wrong" email address.  More generally, we intend to apply
  common sense and avoid tossing out ballots on technicalities.

- Based on community input, the vote-takers have decided to accept the
  late nomination of Hartmut Reuter.

- Because we are electing two chairs in the same election, we have
  decided to accept ballots naming up to two (distinct) candidates.
  This insures that every voter has the opportunity to influence the
  selection of both chairs; otherwise, those who ended up voting for
  the two-year chair would have no input into the selection of the
  one-year chair.

- In any situation which draft-wilkinson-afs3-standardisation-00 does
  not anticipate or address, the vote-takers will apply common sense
  to determine an appropriate course of action.


*** Nominations

We have received nominations and seconds for a total of seven candidates,
listed below in alphabetical order.  All nominations and seconds came from
eligible voters, and all seven candidates have indicated they are willing
to serve.  Note that while some of the listed candidates are not eligible
voters, the provisional charter is quite clear that this is not a
requirement.

  David Boyes
  Doug Engert
  Kim Kimball
  Hartmut Reuter
  Steve Simmons
  Marshall Vale
  Alf Wachsmann


*** Timeline

The election continues to run according to the following timeline,
originally posted in my August 3 message calling for nominations:

  01-Jul-2010  Eligibility Cutoff (see below)
  03-Aug-2010  Call for nominations
  17-Aug-2010  Nominations close - 23:59 UTC
  24-Aug-2010  Call for votes
  07-Sep-2010  Voting closes     - 23:59 UTC
  14-Sep-2010  Results announced
  01-Oct-2010  New chairs take office


*** Voting

Eligible voters should send their votes by email to all three vote-takers,
at the following addresses, by 23:59 UTC on September 7, 2010:

  Jeffrey Hutzelman <jhutz+afs3-votes@cmu.edu>
  Thomas Kula <kula@tproa.net>
  David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>

Votes should _not_ be copied to the mailing list, and will be held in
confidence by the vote-takers.  To make things easier, please include the
word VOTE in the subject of your message.  As noted above, each voter may
submit a single ballot voting for up to two distinct candidates; a more
recent ballot supercedes an earlier one from the same voter.

At the end of the election, the vote-takers will each independently count
up the votes received and post to the mailing list the total number of
votes received by each candidate and a list of the email addresses of
everyone who voted.  No information will be revealed about individual votes
other than the voter's email address.  In the event of a tie, or
discrepancy, the vote-takers will discuss the situation among themselves
and then announce the agreed-upon resolution.

-- Jeffrey T. Hutzelman (N3NHS) <jhutz+@cmu.edu>
   For the registrars / vote-takers