Tapani
Thanks for this message, I think it advances the dialogue. 

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> With a little paranoia I could think it was an attempt to discredit me or push
> me to quit, in order to replace me with someone who didn't want to
> challenge me openly. 

No, that is not what was happening. Actually one of the underlying points of my much-maligned message about the ambiguity of the election results was that the bizarre voting method for NOTA in a multiple-candidate race made it APPEAR as if you had the most NOTA votes of all (50 compared to 37 for all the Council candidates), when in fact - depending on how on interprets non-votes for a Council candidate - you may have been the MOST popular of the candidates (50 vs. 77, 95 and 132). 

Be that as it may, people seem to be uncomfortable with this discussion so I will let it drop. My concern was really about the bizarre ballot, not about the popularity or lack thereof of different candidates. Apologies if my numerical demonstrations were misinterpreted as reflections on particular people.

Let me instead express full-throated support for this statement, which is a point Rafik and others have made:

> the real issue is the shortage of candidates.

Yes. Yes. Yes.
And I think the biggest problem with that is the one you identify here:
 
> In Helsinki I spoke with several potential council candidates, and some
> declined saying "I don't want to run against X".

Aside from the uncompensated work, the Council elections suffer from a natural tendency of people in a cohesive group to avoid competition, which is often seen as a form of conflict. This is a real problem, and has been for many years. I can think of multiple past elections in which we had uncontested elections because a perfectly viable candidate "didn't want to run against X" 

There is no simple solution to this - I am not sure whether letting candidates group as teams would solve this problem, or make it worse. But I am glad you raised the issue and look forward to further discussion of it in Hyderabad.

--MM