The Linux Index

Recently, Students for Free Culture — a non-profit organization
dear to my heart — elected its new board. Several months ago, the group
voted to hold its elections using the same preferential election method
system that Debian uses. To help make their election easier I agreed
to support them with a new set of features in Selectricity aimed at
more structured organizational decision-making. Currently Selectricity
is more geared toward more informal QuickVotes.

From a democratic and voting technology perspective, the election was a
huge success. With 16 voters and 13 candidates, a traditional plurality
or "first past the post" election would have been a poor match for their
group — the 16 first-place votes were very split among the candidates.
The results also show one very polarizing candidate who won the
plurality but was in the bottom third of most preferential rankings! The
use of Selectricity helped SFC select a board who better represented
the preference of their group than they would have otherwise. Exciting
stuff! You can read more on the Free Culture website or on the
Selectricity blog.

Thanks are due both to the previous SFC board who took the risk on the
technology and to all of the candidates and voters! I’m currently
integrating feedback and improvements based on the SFC election and will
open the feature up the public in the next couple weeks. If you want
hear about this when it happens, you should subscribe to the
Selectricity Blog or drop an email to team@selectricity.org.