Kumoricon
Convention Events and Programming => Elections => Topic started by: blooper_boy on November 22, 2022, 08:03:54 pm
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Each year, we hold elections for the board of directors for Altonimbus Entertainment (the organization that produces and runs the Kumoricon convention). Altonimbus Entertainment, and thereby Kumoricon, is governed by a board of directors consisting of nine members who each serve annual terms. Terms begin and end at the conclusion of voting for the annual meeting of the body which elects each board member.
Seven of the nine board members are elected by the membership (that is, the staff of Kumoricon) at the annual meeting of the membership:
- Chair / President
- Director of Infrastructure
- Director of Membership
- Director of Operations
- Director of Programming
- Director of Publicity
- Director of Relations
The next annual meeting of the membership will be held on Sunday, December 11, 2022, at 12:00 noon, online, simulcast on both Kumoricon’s public Discord server and at Kumoricon’s Twitch channel. Official notice was sent to the members on November 22, 2022, and full meeting information is available on the meetings page: https://www.kumoricon.org/meetings (https://www.kumoricon.org/meetings).
We will be using a new voting format this year, based on a bylaws amendment approved by our members earlier this year, and a revision to our elections process approved by the board. Here are the changes we are making:
- Voting for director elections will not occur at the annual membership meeting. Instead, voting for director elections will be open for 5 days, from Thursday, December 8, at 8:00pm, Pacific Time, to Tuesday, December 13, at 8:00pm, Pacific Time.
- All members will receive emailed voting instructions closer to December 8.
- Members do not need to attend the annual meeting of the membership to vote.
- Those who are unable to attend the meeting may watch the video replay on Twitch, and there will be time to watch it before the voting deadline.
- Although we will continue to host live candidate speeches, Q&A, and comments during the annual meeting, we will not pause between each race to vote. We expect the meeting to be much shorter as a result.
- Because voting is not part of a specific membership meeting, proxy voting is not allowed. All members have 5 days to vote and those interested in voting should directly cast their vote.
- In order to reduce the chances of needing a runoff vote, voting will be conducted using approval voting, as specified in the recent bylaws amendment. In approval voting, members vote for as many candidates as the member approves of, with the winner being the candidate who receives the most votes, as long as it is a majority of votes cast. There will also be a "no confidence" option for all races.
Things that are staying the same about director elections:
- We will continue to use ElectionBuddy, a third-party platform, to vote for directors.
- Votes on ElectionBuddy are anonymous. No Kumoricon staff, including the election tellers or moderators, can see who you voted for or whether you voted “no confidence”. (We can, however, see which members submitted a ballot at all.)
- The vote counts for each candidate will be publicly published.
- We will continue to host nominations, online Q&A, comments, and endorsements on the public Discord.
- We will continue to also mirror the nomination list on the website forums and accept questions there.
- We will continue to create an archive of questions, answers, and comments on the staff website for those who do not have a Discord account.
Election roles
These elections are being run by the following staff:
Nomination and election moderator: Heather Holland, Relations Assistant Director
Teller: Tanis Nikana, Assistant Secretary, Cultural Gaming Assistant
Teller: Yaz Wigfall, Director of Operations
Teller: Rebecca W, Panel Manager
Backup teller: Desiree Arceneaux, Attendee Registration Staff
The nomination moderator will oversee nominations, and moderate the online questions and comments.
The election moderator will oversee elections at the election meeting.
The election moderator and tellers will receive and moderate anonymous questions and comments that are read at the meeting (see process below).
Nominations
Nominations are currently open for candidates for the seven positions listed in this message.
Nominations must be seconded to be valid. A person cannot nominate or second themselves. To be listed on the candidate list below and on the ballot, a candidate must be nominated and seconded, and then accept the nomination, by the deadline. Once a candidate is nominated and seconded, they may change their acceptance status at will until the nominations deadline of Wednesday, December 7, 2022, 11:59pm.
Nominations and seconds can be made, and candidates may respond to nominations, in three ways:
- Reply in this thread
- Reply in the #nominations channel on the public Discord
- Email election.nominations@kumoricon.org
The nominations list will be kept in sync between this thread and the #nominations channel in the public Discord. Candidates are listed alphabetically by last name, using the preferred name as set in their official staff registration, which candidates may update at any time, or, alternately, the preferred name as requested to the nomination moderator.
Chair/President
- Brianna Campbell
- Skye Selky
- Robert Trotter
Director of Infrastructure
Director of Membership
Director of Operations
Director of Programming
- Steven Garcia
- Vincent Metal
Director of PublicityDirector of RelationsIf a candidate doesn’t have a nomination listed in this channel separately, then they were nominated, seconded, and accepted at the Rant and Rave session on Sunday, November 13.
In addition, the following people were nominated and seconded at the session, but declined (either at the session, or prior to the open of online nominations):
*Yaz Wigfall for Director of Operations
*Miriam Rae for Director of Publicity
*Heather Holland for Director of Relations
*Panda Rushford for Director of Publicity
*Nolan Dedrickson for Director of Operations
*Shadow Nessy for Director of Programming
*Charly Youravish for Director of Membership
Candidates marked as (deferred) were nominated and seconded at the session, but have not yet accepted. (People in this “defer” status will be moved to the list below if they do not accept or decline by November 26.)
>[This list is currently empty]
Questions and comments
The primary venue for online questions and comments will be the channels for each position on this server. Please ask your question or make your comment in the appropriate channel for that position, and not this channel.
Questions may also be asked in the elections forum thread. One of the election moderators or tellers will copy that question to the appropriate channel here. We ask that candidates respond here on Discord, rather than the forum, in order to keep discussion in one place and not fragmented.
Shortly before the meeting, we will create an exported version of the questions and answers for staff who don’t have a Discord account. We will also continue to hold question-and-comment sessions at the annual meeting.
Anonymous questions and comments
After the open question-and-comment period for each candidate, we will host an additional anonymous question-and-comment period. Questions and comments may be emailed in advance, or during the meeting, to election.support@kumoricon.org.
This process is subject to the following rules:
- The members of the moderator panel (comprised of the election moderator(s) and tellers) choose anonymous questions and comments to sponsor and read at the meeting, from those submitted.
- Anonymous questions/comments are anonymous when read at the meeting, but the moderator panel must know the identity of the person commenting. Your message must be signed with a name that clearly identifies you within the Kumoricon community.
- As part of the moderation process, the panel may request more information from you or request a change to your question/comment, or possibly even reject your question/comment.
- The moderator panel will reply to you stating whether your comment has been accepted.
- Questions/comments may be shortened or summarized, and similar questions/comments from multiple people may be combined.
A more detailed explanation of the rules and process around anonymous questions and comments is available in our elections process: https://www.kumoricon.org/elections-process (https://www.kumoricon.org/elections-process)