Posted by Jerome Davis in EGO Election Results

Posted by Andrew Robinson in EGO Election Results

Posted by Sidney Parker in EGO Election Results
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Voting in the EGO election has closed. The result of the election is that Katherine Dedul will replace Steve Johnson, effective immediately and until Steve Johnson’s term was to end.

There were eight rounds of voting, summarized below:

Candidate	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4	Round 5	Round 6	Round 7	Round 8
Ray Branch	1	1
Jerome Davis	2	2	2	2	2
Katherine Dedul	7	7	8	8	8	8	8	11
Tony Findora	2	2	2	2
Brandon Irvine	1
Geoff Joosten	1	2	2	2	3	5	7	10
Sidney Parker	2	2	2	2	3	3
Steven Sigle	1	1	1
Adam W	4	4	4	5	5	5	6

This is the EGO election with the most candidates I have ever seen, and may be the most complicated one in history. Given that, and that I received a few procedural questions during the process, I want to explain a few things that I imagine will be confusing.

The EGO Election uses Instant Runoff Voting, in which the candidate with the least votes is eliminated in each round and the votes cast for that individual are redistributed according to voter’s stated preferences, until one candidate is the majority winner. One possibility in a complex IRV election is that there will be multiple early-round ties, which I don’t believe we’ve seen in an EGO election here before. The election rules as stated in EEEGO specify that the Election Coordinator may only vote to break a tie, and they also state that the Election Coordinator may have “a vote” for this purpose. However, a single vote is insufficient to break a 4 way first round tie, and the act of voting to break those ties would create additional ties that would create further ties to break, which would eventually require me to cast an absurd number of votes.

In order to determine how to proceed, I retrieved the source code of the old Instant Runoff Voting polling system that we used under WeBBSpace to determine how the old software handled this situation, figuring that this would be the most proper way to ensure that I acted in accordance with the previously established electoral process. My review of that source code determined that the software handled early-round ties by selecting a tied candidate at random to eliminate. Therefore, I decided to replicate this behaviour for this election. This random elimination process affected rounds 1, 2 and 4. The point is, although these ties were broken, a vote was not actually cast by me to break them.

Also, it is worth noting that the Election Coordinator is not generally permitted to reveal whether or not a tie breaking vote was cast (which I’m pretty sure is a written rule but I can’t actually seem to find it at the moment). So I will not tell you if I ever actually did cast a tie breaking vote. However, if it were necessary to cast a tie breaking vote to determine which candidate won the majority of votes after the final elimination round, I will say that I would cast only a single vote to break that tie.

Finally, I want to note that I was privately asked a question about whether or not Katherine Dedul was to eligible to stand for election. This is because EEEGO contains the following text:

EGO is comprised of three members (Egotists) holding at least the rank of Fleet Captain. These members shall serve a term of two years (24 months). These two year terms >shall be staggered so that one new member is elected every eight months, rotating through each of the three Egotists as their two year term expires. The Chief Egotist, >who is responsible for issuing all public EGO statements, shall be the Egotist with the shortest remaining time in office. Once the Chief Egotist has rotated out, the next >shortest term Egotist assumes the title.

Term Limits

Egotists may not stand for incumbent reelection. In this manner, at least eight months must pass between an Egotist leaving office and standing for election again.

Kat is not an incumbent, but eight months have not passed between when she left office and when she was standing for election again, so it is unclear at first glance whether or not term limits apply to Kat.

My reading of the words “in this manner” is that they refer to the previous paragraph describing how EGO terms work, thus, I believe sentence can be understood to mean “In the manner wherein there are three 2 year terms, staggered by 8 months,” e.g. it is merely an example meant to illustrate the required condition of non-incumbency, and not an additional eligibility requirement in itself. There is also no mention of non-incumbent-but-term-limited individuals in the eligibility section that appears later. Thus, I believe that it is not actually a condition that a candidate must wait 8 months to be on EGO; they must merely be not an incumbent.

Regardless of whether my reading is actually correct or not (I think it is), the second sentence of the Term Limits paragraph is phrased in a needlessly confusing way and I propose that legislation be written to clarify this confusion, so that nobody has to do these grammatical gymnastics ever again.

That was really long and confusing, to the point where even I find it tedious to read… so… if there are questions about any of that, I am happy to take them, privately or publicly.

– Joe

Dusting off my brain for a moment, I find that in the midst of my midlife dementia, I actually discovered a nugget of remembrance. This topic did come up during the original Prezolution discussions. It was determined that the irregularities section of LEGOE would be sufficient to cover the contingency without redundantly adding a new section to EEEGO (in the interests of keeping EC regulations in a single place as far and as long as possible). The general consensus as I recall was that should it ever be determined that the irregularity of a non-incumbent technically still within the term-limited period became sufficiently vexing, the framework existed to add the amendment at a later time.

Andy

I see. I’d say that’s generally true , though I actually did get the question, so I thought noting it was appropriate.

I am just curious as to the voting process, as I have no record of any ballot sent to me… how could I vote?

FCAPT Condor

The link to vote was posted in Command (https://www.star-fleet.com/core/command/command/notes/47249/) and in a news item on the front page, which was the top news item during the election and is still present as the third most recent news item.

This is consistent with how EGO elections have always been conducted as far as I am aware (e.g. almost the past decade). We have never in my memory sent ballots to eligible voters by email.

Joe

First I am ok with the way the voting goes and how the EC can cast a tie breaking vote etc…I’m even ok with the vote totals. What I would like to discuss is the Letter of the Law and the Spirit of the Law. I know Joe knows this concept well and I am really sure Daniel would know it as well. So this reads:

Term Limits
Egotists may not stand for incumbent reelection. In this manner, at least eight months must pass between an Egotist leaving office and standing for election again.
Kat is not an incumbent, but eight months have not passed between when she left office and when she was standing for election again, so it is unclear at first glance whether or not term limits apply to Kat.

So yes technically this can be got around. My question is what is the Spirit of this “Law”. Is it so that we do not have the same people rotating in and out. Given the smaller voting group this was probably seen as a real possibility and as such why the bylaw was written this way. So my question is should we consider that there be a 8 month waiting period. I mean just looking at this pool of candidates and the last ones standing I think this might have been a good idea. We want EGO to be a place where people can learn more about the government and in their experience level assist in the indirect and sometimes very direct manner in which the Club manages itself.

So this is the discussion point. Not so much how and who got elected.

Sidney

I would heartily disagree on the last point. EGO was instituted as a measure of institutional memory and a final check and balance on a potentially runaway president. They represent STF, its members, and their will. EGO was never intended to be a training ground or an office in which people could learn about government. It was deliberately and carefully crafted to ensure that it would always be composed of extremely experienced government officers of high rank, with a vast storehouse of knowledge and experience.

For the rule about the eight month cooldown period, this was established to ensure that we didn’t end up with a ruling cabal, but a continually rotating series of experienced and involved senior members who could step in during extreme circumstances and provide a final measure of protection for the club and its membership. The rule explicitly addresses full EGO terms, not partials in special elections. As I’d mentioned, it was discussed, but determined that a measure of flexibility on the part of the EC was warranted under the irregularities section of LEGOE. We were comfortable with it back then because we understood that if it ever became too burdensome or the members wished it, a mechanism existed to amend EEEGO to address that particular situation.

Andy

I would really like to see other faces in EGO. We’ve had basically had the same eight people in EGO since the beginning and never a Fleet Captain. There should be a period of time, say five years, where all previous members of EGO are locked out to stop the popularity contest and allow at least some members that have been eligible but locked out for years the opportunity to serve. FCAPTs and above were awarded their pips for exceptional service to the club but many have been forever trapped at that point, either by not being in the “in crowd” or not being able to live in IRC/Discord. This, like the FCOMM situation, has to change or it becomes pointless and nothing more than another “old guard” cookie to be passed around only among the club’s aristocracy.

Jerome

Personally I want to say thank you to everyone who put their name forward to volunteer at short notice because Steve stepped down and say congratulations to Kat on her appointment.

Cale