Board Agreement required *post-vote* for all candidates?

Elections
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On Monday, the day on which OSI said polls were to close, I received an email marked “TIME SENSITIVE” from the OSI Elections team asking me to sign the OSI Board Agreement. Three other candidates have confirmed that they too received this email.

During the orientation sessions for prospective board candidates, it was explained quite clearly that signing the Board Agreement was a requirement to be seated as a director, but it was never stated that mere candidates were expected to sign the Board Agreement. If all candidates were expected to sign the Board Agreement, regardless of the election outcome, why was the urgent request made only after voting closed?

When I was an OSI board director in the past, there was no “pre-signing” requirement.(Meanwhile, as far as I know, no election results have been announced.) Can someone from the OSI explain what’s going on?

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I believe I am one of the three other candidates. However, I don’t identify as “pretty confused.” :relieved_face:

Edit: That said, I am in favor of discussing this here publicly, rather than in private email. :wink:

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Noted, I have edited my post accordingly. :slightly_smiling_face:

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While the polls were open, we’ve heard that there may be candidates with no intention to sign the board agreement, which has become a mandatory requirement since you last served. We need to know who the actual candidates are before we run the STV calculation to determine the outcome of the vote. So for process efficiency, the board asked all candidates to confirm their good faith intention to serve on the board, so we can tell the software.

The board agreement only applies to seated members.

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Richard, Chad:

I think both of you know that I’m an elections geek. I’m on the OSI’s board elections committee.

When I joined the board in 2022 there was a lot about our elections process that was inconsistent or not documented, making things confusing for voters and new board members. We’ve been in a process of continuous improvement since then. The overhaul of the elections texts on the website was my personal work as a member of the elections committee, to make terms and timelines clear. We’ve made a bunch of other changes this cycle with the goal of making sure that candidates are clear on what the actual work of the Board is and are prepared to contribute.

You’re right that it would be helpful to add signing the Board Agreement to the timeline documentation for candidates, and I’ve noted that for the election retro. Of course, for anyone who ends up on the Board, we could use your help to keep improving the elections docs.

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Awesome, thanks. All part of growing up. We’ll get there! :grin:

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As an onlooker I am quite surprised by these developments.

Here’s Stefano’s answer to the OP:

If Stefano’s post is the official response to the question asked by @fontana in OP (“If all candidates were expected to sign the Board Agreement, regardless of the election outcome, why was the urgent request made only after voting closed?”) — then how is this not an admission that some procedural change was formulated in response to rumours about specific candidates that reached the OSI while the polls were open, especially given the fact that said change was then announced only after after voting closed?

That seems to me textbook changing the rules during the game in order to steer towards particular outcomes and away from others (e.g., getting certain reform-minded candidates voted in). It seems hard to interpret this turn of events in another way.

With regard to the appeal to “software” and “process efficiency”, I don’t think that anyone in the software community is much impressed by it. Surely the very fact of one’s candidature confirms one’s good faith intention to actually serve on the board?

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