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