Wikimedia Foundation elections/2021/Voting

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The election ended 31 August 2021. No more votes will be accepted.
The results were announced on 7 September 2021. Please consider submitting any feedback regarding the 2021 election on the elections' post analysis page.

2021 Board Elections

Main Page

Candidates

Voting information

Single Transferable Vote

Results

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The 2021 Board of Trustees elections are from 18 August 2021 to 31 August 2021. Members of the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to elect four candidates to a three-year term. This page contains voting instructions, voter eligibility, and a voter FAQ.

Vote

If you are eligible to vote:

Read the Candidate Presentations
Review the skills assessment done by the existing Board
Decide which candidates you will support.
Go to the SecurePoll voting page.
Follow the instructions on that page.

How to vote

Below is some helpful information to make sure your voting experience goes smoothly. Please read this section carefully before you go vote.

This election is using the Single Transferable Vote methodology. An explanation of the calculation process can be found here.
On the voting page, the voter will see a sequence of dropdown boxes. The voter will rank candidates from “Preference 1” (most preferred) to “Preference 19” (least preferred).
Starting from the top, the voter will begin ranking candidates they consider most suitable to be elected. Candidates that the voter believes are least suitable should be marked toward the bottom of their list.
A voter may stop ranking candidates at any point during the voting process. For example, out of 19 candidates, the voter may only rank the top 6 and not rank the remaining 13.
Candidates need to be ranked without skipping numbers in-between. Skipping numbers will result in an error. For example:

Preference one: Susan

Preference two: (blank)

Preference three: Joseph

This is not allowed. Preference three cannot be added without adding preference two.

A voter may not rank the same candidate multiple times. Ranking the same candidate multiple times will result in an error. For example:

Preference one: Susan

Preference two: Susan

Preference three: Joseph

This is not allowed. Candidate Susan was ranked twice.

People can re-vote in the election. It overwrites their previous vote. They can do this as many times as they like.

Voting Example and Best Practices

There have been some questions about voting and how ranking candidates works. Here is a short explanation. Single Transferable Vote helps to rank preferences so you can share more than one choice with your vote. Let’s use colors of shirts as an example this time.

Your employer is ordering shirts for all employees and you need to pick a shirt color. Your employer will order the same two colors of shirts for everyone. They decide to allow everyone to vote. The colors of shirts are:

Yellow
Blue
Orange
Green

You absolutely love the color blue! Green is your next favorite color. Yellow is a fine color. Orange is not a good color for you at all. You do not like the color orange.

Here is how you should vote:

Blue
Green
Yellow

But you should not rank orange at all.

Here’s why

Blue is the color of shirt you absolutely want to wear. A green shirt is your next preference, and you’d be fine with a yellow shirt. You would not at all be happy to wear an orange shirt.

What happens if you add orange to your vote:

You have more of a chance to end up wearing an orange shirt.

Here's why

If other people vote and they rank orange shirts higher than blue, green or yellow, your vote could go to orange. If you do not vote for orange, there is no vote of yours that can go to orange. Voting for orange increases the chance your employer will order orange shirts.

How does this relate to the Board of Trustees election?

Vote for the candidates you wish to seat on the Board in the order you prefer the candidates. Do not rank candidates you do not wish to seat on the Board. Only rank candidates you would like to see join the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.

Now that you know this, do you want to change your vote? No problem. Voters may vote again and this new vote will overwrite the previous vote.

Voting eligibility

Voting eligibility is set by the Elections Committee. Contact the Elections Committee via email at board-electionswikimediaorg by 27 August 2021 if you are unable to vote but believe you should be able to vote based upon the criteria listed.

Editors

You may vote from any single registered account you own on a Wikimedia wiki. You may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you own. To qualify, this one account must:

not be blocked in more than one project;
and not be a bot;
and have made at least 300 edits before 5 July 2021 across Wikimedia wikis;
and have made at least 20 edits between 5 January 2021 and 5 July 2021.

The AccountEligibility tool can be used to quickly verify basic editor voting eligibility.

Developers

Developers qualify to vote if they:

are Wikimedia server administrators with shell access
or have made at least one merged commit to any Wikimedia repos on Gerrit, between 5 January 2021 and 5 July 2021.

Additional criteria

or have made at least one merged commit to any repo in nonwmf-extensions or nonwmf-skins, between 5 January 2021 and 5 July 2021.
or have made at least one merged commit to any Wikimedia tool repo (for example magnustools) between 5 January 2021 and 5 July 2021.
or have made at least 300 edits before 5 July 2021, and 20 edits between 5 January 2021 and 5 July 2021, on Translatewiki.
or maintainers/contributors of any tools, bots, user scripts, gadgets, and Lua modules on Wikimedia wikis.
or have substantially engaged in the design and/or review processes of technical development related to Wikimedia.

Note: If you meet the main criteria, you will be able to vote immediately. Due to the technical limitations of SecurePoll, people who meet the additional criteria may not be able to directly vote, unless they meet any of the other criteria. If you think you meet the additional criteria, please email board-electionswikimediaorg with the reasoning at least four days before the last date for voting i.e. on or before 27 August 2021. If you meet the criteria, we will add you to a manual list, to be able to vote.

Wikimedia Foundation staff and contractors

Current Wikimedia Foundation staff and contractors qualify to vote if they have been employed by the Foundation as of 5 July 2021.

Wikimedia movement affiliates’ staff and contractors

Current Wikimedia Chapter, thematic organization or user group staff and contractors qualify to vote if they have been employed by their organization as of 5 July 2021.

Wikimedia Foundation board members, Advisory board members, FDC committee members

Current and former members of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board and the Funds Dissemination Committee are qualified to vote.

Single Transferable Vote

This voting system allows voters to rank candidates. The benefit of this is voters can rank their choices in order of preference. This helps share your preferences more clearly than support or oppose. If your top choice candidate already has enough votes to be selected, your vote will be moved to your second choice candidate. If your top choice candidate will not win, your vote will be moved to your second choice candidate. And so on.

SecurePoll was updated for this voting system. Meek’s STV with Droop quota is the specific system used.

Voting FAQ

1. How can I verify my eligibility?

Editors can utilize the AccountEligibility tool to verify eligibility in the current election. The global account information page is available to learn more about your edit count and contribution history.

2. How are eligibility requirements set?

The Elections Committee sets the eligibility requirements prior to the start of the election.

3. Eligible voter is unable to vote

You may receive a message: "Sorry, you are not in the predetermined list of users authorized to vote in this election."

Solutions

Make sure you are logged in.
Make sure you are voting from Meta, you can use this link to go to the voting start page.
If you are a developer, Wikimedia Foundation staff member or Advisory Board member, the Elections Committee may not have been able to match you to a specific username. You should contact board-electionswikimediaorg to be added to the list.
If you are still unable to vote and believe you should be able to please leave a message on the election talk page or contact the Elections Committee at board-electionswikimediaorg. A response should be sent within 72 hours.

4. I cannot log into VoteWiki

You do not need to log into VoteWiki to vote. If you see the ballot, then SecurePoll has successfully identified you. For security reasons, only a limited number of accounts are registered on VoteWiki.

5. Is anyone able to see who I voted for?

No, the election is secure. The election uses SecurePoll software. Votes are secret. No one from the Elections Committee, the Board, or anyone on the Wikimedia Foundation staff has access to them. A member of the Trust & Safety team at the Wikimedia Foundation holds the encryption key for the election. Once the key is activated, the election is halted.

6. What data is collected about voters?

Some personally identifiable data on voters is viewable by a select few persons who audit and tally the election (the Election Committee). This includes the IP address and user agent. This data is automatically deleted 90 days after the election.

7. How will this data be used?

Metrics about this election will be summarized on the Board of Trustees election pages on Meta and the Post-Analysis report of the 2021 Board of Trustees election. No personally identifiable information will be published. This personally identifiable information may be used to determine the number of independent voters and the global spread of voters.

8. When I vote, I see no acknowledgement that the vote was received, and an automated message appears saying that I need to be logged in to vote. What is happening?

You do not need to log into votewiki to vote. This error is likely a caching issue. We apologise for this hassle: please try to vote again at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Elections_2021 This should prompt you with a message saying "The vote will be conducted on a central wiki. Please click the button below to be transferred." Clicking on the button will send you to the voting server and should allow you to vote.

Also note that you are free to assign or change your voting preferences as many times as you like. Only one vote per user will be stored, and the system will simply replace your old vote(s) with the new one, and discard any previous vote(s).

When your voting process is complete, a receipt is displayed on your screen, which you may retain as evidence that you have voted.

9. How is the voting system safeguarded from users entering multiple votes?

Only one vote per user is stored on the system. You are free to assign or change your voting preferences as many times as you like. The system will simply replace your old vote(s) with the new one, and discard any previous vote(s).

10. Other question not mentioned here

For technical or vote system errors, please email board-electionswikimediaorg. Please specify the username you are trying to vote with and the project where you are trying to vote. A member of the elections committee will respond to your email as soon as possible.