Hi Tapani

While I realize your e-mail is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I think the 
time would have been better spent elaborating on your own achievements 
and most importantly giving us a sense of your vision for the future 
rather than bad-mouthing poor Nota.

Matthew


On 02/09/2016 06:09, Tapani Tarvainen wrote:
> Warning: I'm not writing this as the Chair but as a candidate
> in the election. So this is campaigning, election propaganda:
> I am trying to influence how you vote.
>
> Amd I'm going to use the time-honoured means of badmouthing
> other candidates instead of praising myself.
>
> Specifically, I think one of the choices really sucks,
> namely None of the Above, also known as NOTA.
>
> OK, to be fair, NOTA might make a good Chair, at least he has never
> made any stupid mistakes, which is more than I can say for myself.
> And in the Chair election rules are actually slightly weighed against
> NOTA, as in case of a tie NOTA loses. I still think I'd be at least
> a bit better Chair than NOTA.
>
> But in council NOTA would not only be bad, in the council
> election he's got an unfair advantage in the rules, too.
>
> Suppose you like candidate X, don't care about others but
> are thinking whether or not to vote for NOTA as well.
>
> In any situation where it matters, that is, where X is in any danger
> of losing, voting X+NOTA rather than just X weakens X's chances of
> getting elected.
>
> To see this, consider a situation where all votes but yours
> have been counted and X is just one vote behind NOTA.
> (This is the only situation where your vote matters.)
>
> If you've voted for just X, X will catch up with NOTA and wins.
>
> If you've voted for X+NOTA, X remains one vote behind NOTA and loses.
>
> So if you think your vote matters in getting X elected,
> you should vote for just X, not for X+NOTA.
>
> You should vote for NOTA only if you are sure your favourite
> candidate(s) will get elected anyway and you just want to weaken other
> candidates' chances.
>
> Or, vote for NOTA if you think NOTA is *the* best choice and all others
> would be better off losing.
>
> Do *not* vote NOTA as a symbolic expression of dissatisfaction or
> anything like that. That's not what it's now for. If everybody votes
> for their favourite candidate(s) plus NOTA, the election will fail
> totally, nobody getting elected. That would not be good.
>
> And remember, you can still change your vote even if you've already
> voted: just vote again, only the last one counts.
>

-- 
--------------
Matthew Shears
Global Internet Policy and Human Rights
Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT)
+ 44 771 2472987