Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-07-18/Wikimedia board elections

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Trustees re-elected, but exact results delayed

By Michael Snow, 18 July 2005

The two community representatives on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Angela Beesley and Florence Nibart-Devouard, were re-elected to their posts in the election that concluded last week. Detailed results are still not available, but both were apparently approved by a majority of voters.

Within a few hours of the election closing on Monday, Danny, one of the election officials, released preliminary election results indicating that Beesley and Nibart-Devouard had been re-elected. They had both been chosen in June 2004 for one-year terms and have now been elected to serve for an additional two years.

Delay in releasing full results

When the initial results were released, Danny indicated that the exact totals were being validated and would be completed over the next 24 hours. However, after a couple days passed and this did not happen, a few people asked about the delay. It seems now that the results will finally be available sometime this week.

In last year's election, the vote totals were also released somewhat after the identity of the trustees had been announced. This was due to uncertainty over whether the unsuccessful candidates were willing to have this information disclosed, as it had not been clear in advance that it would be.

This time the delay is reportedly due to issues with determining the validity of some votes. For example, it was pointed out that Gzornenplatz voted while subject to an indefinite ban, and it was not certain whether the vote should be counted. Several other possibly spurious votes have been identified and are being reviewed.

Order of finish, additional analysis

However, the number of questionable votes is apparently low enough that it will not affect the outcome in any case. Beesley and Nibart-Devouard were both approved by more than 50% of all voters, and Samuel Klein, who endorsed their re-election as part of his campaign statement, came in third. The order of finish for the remaining candidates was Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, Arno Lagrange, and Francis Schonken.

As the election used approval voting, majority support was not guaranteed even for the winners; last year only Beesley was elected by a majority, and only one of the current arbitrators received over 50% of the vote using the same system. Both Beesley and Nibart-Devouard increased their percentage of the overall vote from last year.

The total number of votes cast was 1,484, more than double the number of people who participated in last year's election. Although the candidate totals are not yet available, a breakdown of votes by languages is. Just under half of all votes (49%) came from English-language projects, a significant increase from about 40% the previous year.

Update: The detailed vote totals for each candidate were finally published on Monday, July 18. Beesley received 70% of the vote and Nibart-Devouard 55%. Results for the remaining candidates were as follows: Klein 33%, Heiskanen 25%, Lagrange 21%, and Schonken 12%.

Also this week: Elections — Press coverage — Picture of the day — Harry Potter — VfD — News and notes — T.R.O.L.L. — Bounties