The GNOME Foundation Membership and Elections Committee are pleased to announce the upcoming elections for the Board of Directors in Spring 2024.
The most important deadlines (UTC) in the timeline are the following:
*GNOME Board Elections 2024*
2024-05-20: Announcements and list of candidates opens.
2024-05-27: Last day to announce candidacies, submit summary statements.
2024-05-28: Final list of candidates.
2024-05-28: Instructions mailed to eligible voters, voting begins.
2024-06-11: Voting closes.
2024-06-11: Preliminary results are announced.
2024-06-25: Last day to challenge preliminary results.
ELECTIONS
During this elections cycle the GNOME Foundation membership will be electing a total of six (6) out of nine (9) members. One out of the six (6) elected directors will serve for one year, while the remaining will serve for a two years term.
Why are we going to elect six (6) directors during this year’s elections? Please read below under the VOTING session.
The seats that will be up for election during this run are:
Robert McQueen
Jeremy Allison
Regina Nkenchor
Sammy Fung
Directors that will remain part of the Board are:
Sonny Piers
Erik Albers
Michael Downey
The Directors that will remain part of the Board are required to declare their affiliation by adding a comment to this thread.
CANDIDACY
Any person is eligible to be elected to the Board of Directors if they have the support of the required number of voting Members. Members nominations must be seconded by one (1) other member, and non-Members must be seconded by 5% (up to a maximum of 5) members.
To announce your candidacy, create a new post within the Elections and Referendums Discourse category (Elections and Referendums - GNOME Discourse) with your full name, e-mail, corporate affiliation (if any), and a description of your reasons for wanting to serve as a director.
Candidacies must be announced prior to 2024-05-27, 23:59 UTC. A list of candidates will be announced on 2024-05-28.
QUESTIONS TO THE CANDIDATES
Members are invited to ask questions to one or all candidates via Discourse at:
Elections and Referendums - GNOME Discourse
This category is used when the GNOME Foundation holds elections for the Board of Directors, or other referendums. Posting may be restricted to Foundation members from time to time.
These candidates might become your representative, so do not hesitate to ask them questions.
Please try to avoid asking duplicate questions that others have already asked. Also, bear in mind that the candidates invest a lot of time answering questions, so please be reasonable with the amount and scope of the questions.
ELECTORATE
Every GNOME Foundation member whose membership is valid as of 2024-05-28 is eligible to vote in the elections. Please note that Emeritus members won’t have voting rights. More details about what Emeritus members can and can’t do are available at:
MembershipCommittee/EmeritusMembers - GNOME Wiki!
If you are not a member yet, please consider applying for membership as soon as possible at:
Late applications will most likely not be processed in time.
The GNOME Foundation Membership and Elections Committee do inform members they need to renew by mailing them once a month both on their personal email and on Discourse (Membership - GNOME Discourse). We recommend that members also double check this to avoid a missed opportunity to vote. Please verify that the email address that is associated with your GNOME Foundation membership is valid and that you are able to read emails sent to this address. With the introduction of https://account.gnome.org verifying this information is now possible by just logging in with your GNOME Account. Your password can be reset via:
A new password will be e-mailed directly to the registered e-mail for your account.
You can verify your membership status by visiting Membership – The GNOME Foundation and looking for your name, surname on the list of members.
VOTING
The Electorate will receive complete instructions on how to vote by 2024-05-28 via email.
This specific election run will elect a total of six (6) directors as a result of:
-
Amendments that were introduced in 2022 to the Foundation’s Bylaws. The aforementioned changes introduced the ability to only renew a subset of the available seats of the Board. The rationale of the changes and the historical information about these specific amendments can be found here, see GNOME Foundation 2019 Annual General Meeting (AGM)
-
A resolution by the board on 14th March 2024 to extend the number of Directors to nine (9) instead of the former seven (7), see FoundationBoard/Minutes/20240314 - GNOME Wiki!
The candidates voted for most as counted by a single transferable vote system will be elected, except that no more than two individuals affiliated with any one corporation may be sitting on the Board as Directors during the same term. This holds true even in the case a subset of seats is up for renewal: as an example if X is affiliated with the Example Inc. and his/her seat is not up for renewal, the amount of possible candidates affiliated with Example Inc. that may be elected would be 1 (one). On top of that and as taken from the Foundation’s Bylaws: “8.2.4: In the event that any election of directors results in a single entity representing greater than 40% of the Board, than the nominee representing that entity receiving the least number of votes, shall be replaced by the nominee receiving the greatest number of votes who was not elected to the Board.”.
In the event of a tie for the final slot on the board, the Elections Committee will schedule run-off elections as soon as possible.
More information about The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee and the voting process can be found here:
https://wiki.gnome.org/MembershipCommittee
https://vote.gnome.org/2024