Elections

The Fedora Program Manager is responsible for conducting elections for various bodies within Fedora. After each release, the Fedora Council, Mindshare Committee, and Fedora Engineering Steering Committee run elections. Other teams may request elections if they have a need.

The Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator (FCAIC) is the backup elections wrangler. The FCAIC & FPgM cannot be candidates for elected positions.

FESCo has a separate election policy that requires more candidates than open seats.

Pre-voting

The wiki-based voting process is a giant pain. Perhaps you would like to extend the voting app to allow nomination and election interviews.

Before the nomination period

  • Make sure an "I Voted" badge has been created for this election cycle.

  • Edit the election banner template in the wiki to update the dates and current status

  • Edit the Elections docs page

  • Open a ticket with each group to see if they want to change the questions

  • Update wiki pages for each election:

    • Update the list of leaving members

    • Clear the candidates table

    • Remove edit protection

  • Open the nominations by announcing to the Community Blog and mailing lists

During/after the nomination period

  • Update the templates/* files in the repo (ssh://git@pagure.io/tickets/fedora-pgm/elections-interviews.git) with the new questions

  • Edit the election banner template in the wiki to update the dates and current status

  • Candidates will post interviews in private issues in the elections-interviews repo.

  • If the Community Blog post announcing nominations is set to "sticky", un-sticky it.

After the interview period

  • Convert interviews to community blog

    • One post per-candidate

    • Include FAS account, IRC, wiki page (see previous examples)

    • Set the candidate as the author

  • Write a wrap-up post (look at 2017 elections interview as example). link to interview post and user wiki

Get the FCAIC to review posts to make sure nothing is misspelled or mis-copied, etc.
At one time, we were hoping to have the Fedora Podcast conduct interviews with candidates as well, but that has fizzled.
A long time ago, we conducted IRC town halls with candidates. We stopped doing that.

Voting setup

The elections app runs on elections.fedoraproject.org.

  • maximum range: # of candidates

  • URL: link to wiki page with nominations

  • Admin groups: automatically includes the elections group

  • When adding users, add link to interview on Community Blog

  • Edit the election banner template in the wiki to update the dates and current status

The “Candidates are FAS users?” validation check is buggy, don’t use it. Ben Cotton hopes to have this fixed before the Fedora 32 elections.
The logic to enforce FESCo’s CLA+1 requirement is too strict. Council and Mindshare do not have that requirement. Ben Cotton hopes to have this fixed before Fedora 32 elections.

After elections

  1. Post the results to the Community Blog

  2. Send results with a link to the Community Blog to the announce mailing list

  3. Send individual election results to the council-discuss, devel-announce, and mindshare mailing lists

  4. Update Pagure groups, wiki pages, mailing lists as described below

  5. Edit the election banner template in the wiki to update the dates and current status

  6. Edit the Elections docs page

Council

FESCo (Engineering)

Mindshare

Convincing teams to give you admin access to things will make life easier.

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