Dear all,

Now that elections are over and results clear we should start focusing
on other things, but I still wish to share some thoughts with you.

The NOTA issue is obviously something we need to take care of, as well
as writing down the election procedures, but that's not all there is -
we must beware of treating just symptoms and missing the real disease.

That is not to say NOTA isn't important in itself, too, but clearly
there was something else going on that made it seem bigger than life.

Looking at history of NCSG council elections, the treatment of NOTA
and the ballot layout has been changed in almost every election -
indeed with only one exception, when Rafik, to his credit, did it the
same way twice. And as far as EC mailing list archives tell, it has
always been done by the Chair acting alone, with no input from the EC.
Yet there'd been no public outcry let alone formal appeals.

So what was different this time?

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. But it doesn't take me long to dismiss
that as a completely implausible conspiracy theory.

Nor will I question the sincerity of the appellants's belief that I
was changing a longstanding tradition. After all human memory is
short, two years is a long time, and people tend to think their
interpretation of things as natural and universal. But still, the
strength of the reaction was surprising.

Perhaps some people did think NOTA would be significant this time and
that I was trying to materially affect election results in an improper
way. If so, that was a clear failure of communication in my part.

But still I think the real problem lies elsewhere.

I may be wrong about this, but I sense a deep dissatisfaction at the
way election results were effectively decided by nomination process,
including real or perceived backstage deals, which left actual votes
all but irrelevant. Then NOTA option was seen as a way to express
that.

If so, the problem will not be solved by any better NOTA rule.

For the real issue is the shortage of candidates.

One reason for that is obviously the usual in volunteer-driven
organizations: it's a lot work with no pay. We can hardly fix that.

It also seems people see losing to be so bad, maybe too embarrassing,
that they don't want to risk it, even though it's normal in most
elections: most people lose most of the time, winning requires
persistence and many attempts.

A worse problem is the negative atmosphere, sense of distrust,
personal attacks and the like. At times it feels like there's a fog of
paranoia surrounding us. And it affects everything we do, not just
elections.

How to address this, how to reduce the distrust that's eating
us from within, is a hard question with no easy answers.
Yet it is something we must try to do.

There are also issues that might be fixable by changing
the election rules.

In Helsinki I spoke with several potential council candidates,
and some declined saying "I don't want to run against X".
That may have been behind some people's decision to pull
out of the race later as well.

One way to fix that would be so-called list elections used
in some countries in parliamentary elections: letting
candidates group as teams, or parties if you will.
That would require changing the charter, but it might be
worth considering.

But, enough rambling for now. We've got lots of work ahead,
let's get on with it.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen