OSI Board seats are filled through elections among the Individual Members and the Affiliates (some seats are designated as member-elected, others are affiliate-elected).In addition the one seat is designated for the General Manager. Importantly, per the OSI By-laws these elections are advisory and the OSI Board must vote to adopt the results formally.

The OSI has used an online voting system for elections. However, while the system has proved adequate for our needs and reliable, it is important to note the adminsitration of the system requires direct support from OSI staff around:

• System set-up and configuration (E-Vote)
• Integration with CiviCRM to access member contact information (emails)

Elections at the OSI generally use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting Approval Voting method, or else the Ranked Choice voting method (also known as “Instant Runoff”, “Transferable Vote”, “Preferential Vote”, or “Alternative Vote”). The choice is partly determined by the state of the software and UI support; currently the system is ready to do Approval Voting, and we're working on getting the UI for other methods ready.

All voting is done by email. As an OSI member, you will receive an email with instructions on how to vote; the instructions will include a URL with a unique token where you can cast your vote(s) at elections.opensource.org. The candidate list will be on the ballot page, and there will be links to further information about the candidates. (If you think that ballot email might be in your spam folder, search for “election-admin” or “elections.opensource.org” to find it.)

See https://elections.opensource.org/ for technical details about our voting system.

This voting system is being used for our:

• 2013 Individual Members Elections (June/July 2013)
• 2013 Affiliate Elections (April/May 2013)