Elections process
Each year, we hold elections for the board of directors for Altonimbus Entertainment (the organization that produces and runs the Kumoricon convention). Altonimbus, 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 annual meeting of the body which elects each board member.
Due to the postponement of Kumoricon 2020 to 2021, all staff positions for Kumoricon 2020 became 2021 staff positions, and if you held a Kumoricon 2020 position, you are automatically Kumoricon 2021 staff—except for board positions, which remain based on annual terms.
Seven of the nine board members are elected by the membership (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 December 5, 2020, at 11:00am, online, at Kumoricon’s Twitch channel. Official notice was sent to the members on November 25th, 2020, and full meeting information is available on the Meetings page:
https://www.kumoricon.org/meetings. We will be performing our elections online using a new process. Voting is open to Altonimbus Entertainment members (Kumoricon staff, which includes DigiKumo staff). As with previous meetings of the membership this year, the board of directors has authorized, under ORS 65.205, member participation by remote communication for this meeting. If you are a member of Altonimbus Entertainment (Kumoricon staff), you may officially participate in this meeting, using the following procedures. Under these procedures, you will be treated the same as if you were present in person at one of our in-person meetings, including counting toward quorum and ability to vote in director elections.
As with previous years, we are holding online nominations and Q&A prior to elections. Most of our online elections activity will be on our staff Discord server. We are also continuing to host a forum thread to allow non-staff to nominate and ask questions.
Elections and eligibility are governed by the bylaws of Altonimbus Entertainment (https://www.kumoricon.org/bylaws) and the meeting process by our Elections Process https://www.kumoricon.org/elections-process, which has had significant updates for 2020 both to clarify the election administration roles as well as to describe an online voting process.
How to officially attend as a member and voteIn order to officially count toward quorum and vote, members (staff) will need to have a personal account on either Discord or Twitch, and register their account identifier by listing it on the staff management personal details form. Other than listing your account in your personal details, you don't need to do anything else in advance. During the meeting, all votes that are held by secret ballot will be conducted on a third-party election platform, ElectionBuddy.
NominationsNominations are currently open for candidates for the seven positions listed in the elections process pin.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 Friday, December 4, 2020, 11:59pm.
Nominations and seconds can be made, and candidates may respond to nominations, in three ways:
* Reply in this channel
* Reply on the elections forum thread
* Email election.nominations@kumoricon.org
The nominations list will be kept in sync between this pin and the elections forum post. 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.
Chair/President
* Brian Mathews - accept
*
Director of Infrastructure
* Ash Bunny Butler - accept
*
Director of Membership
* Charmaine Martinez - decline* Jessica Ulibarri - accept
* Charly Youravish - decline
*
Director of Operations
* Yaz Wigfall - accept
*
Director of Programming
* Devin Hunter - accept
*
Director of Publicity
* Samantha Rushford - accept
*
Director of Relations
* Heather Holland - accept
* Amber Feldman - accept
Questions and commentsThe primary venue for online questions and comments will be the channels for each position on this Discord server. Please ask your question or make your comment in the channel for that position (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 the staff Discord, rather than the forum, in order to keep discussion in one place and not fragmented.
Shortly before the election, 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 elections 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. This process is subject to the following rules:
1. The members of the moderator panel (comprised of the election moderator and tellers) choose anonymous questions and comments to sponsor and read at the meeting, from those submitted.
2. 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 the name that you are known by in the Kumoricon community.
3. 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.
4. The moderator panel will reply to you stating whether your comment has been accepted.
5. 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
