Debian Project Leader Elections 2006

Time Line
Nominations
Debate
Data and Statistics
Quorum
Majority Requirement
Outcome

Time Line

Nomination period:	February 5^th 00:00:01 UTC, 2006	February 26^th 00:00:00 UTC, 2006
Campaigning period:	February 26^th 00:00:01 UTC, 2006	March 19^th 00:00:00 UTC, 2006
Voting period:	March 19^th, 00:00:01 UTC, 2006	April 9^th, 00:00:00 UTC, 2006

Please note that the new term for the project leader shall start on April 17^th, 2006.

Nominations

Jeroen van Wolffelaar [jeroen@debian.org] [platform]
Ari Pollak [ari@debian.org] [platform]
Steve McIntyre [93sam@debian.org] [platform]
Anthony Towns [ajt@debian.org] [platform]
Andreas Schuldei [andreas@debian.org] [platform]
Jonathan (Ted) Walther [krooger@debian.org] [platform]
Bill Allombert [ballombe@debian.org] [platform]

The ballot, can be received through email by emailing ballot@vote.debian.org with the subject leader2006.

Don Armstrong, David Nusinow, Thaddeus H. Black, Martin-Éric Racine, and MJ Ray have agreed to be debate moderators. I would like to extend the thanks of the project for their stellar work in conducting an excellently orchestrated debate, and a professionally rendered debate log. A transcript of the debate is available for review.

Data and Statistics

This year, like always, some statistics have been gathered about ballots received and acknowledgements sent periodically during the voting period. Additionally, the list of voters has been recorded. Also, the tally sheet is also available to be viewed. Please remember that the project leader election has a secret ballot, so the tally sheet is produced with the hash of the alias of the voter rather than the name; the alias having been sent to the corresponding voter when the acknowledgement of the ballot was sent so that people may verify that their votes are correct. While the voting was still open the tally was a dummy one; after the vote, the final tally sheet has been put in place. Please note that for secret ballots the md5sum on the dummy tally sheet is randomly generated, as otherwise the dummy tally sheet would leak information relating the md5 hash and the voter.

Quorum

With 972 developers, we have:

 Current Developer Count = 972
 Q ( sqrt(#devel) / 2 ) = 15.5884572681199
 K min(5, Q )           = 5
 Quorum  (3 x Q )       = 46.7653718043597

Option1 Reached quorum: 319 > 47.0531614240744
Option2 Reached quorum: 158 > 47.0531614240744
Option3 Reached quorum: 344 > 47.0531614240744
Option4 Reached quorum: 339 > 47.0531614240744
Option5 Reached quorum: 321 > 47.0531614240744
Option6 Reached quorum: 73 > 47.0531614240744
Option7 Reached quorum: 294 > 47.0531614240744

Majority Requirement

All candidates would need a simple majority to be eligible.

Option1 passes Majority. 4.253 (319/75) > 1
Dropping Option2 because of Majority. 0.782 (158/202) <= 1
Option3 passes Majority. 6.491 (344/53) > 1
Option4 passes Majority. 4.775 (339/71) > 1
Option5 passes Majority. 4.280 (321/75) > 1
Dropping Option6 because of Majority. 0.243 (73/301) <= 1
Option7 passes Majority. 3.379 (294/87) > 1

Outcome

The winner of the election is Anthony Towns

I would like to thank all the candidates for their service to the project, for standing for the post of project leader, and for offering the developers a strong and viable group of candidates.

Total unique votes cast: 421, which is 43.3127572% of all possible votes.

In the graph above, any pink colored nodes imply that the option did not pass majority, the Blue is the winner. The Octagon is used for the options that did not beat the default. In the following table, tally[row x][col y] represents the votes that option x received over option y. A more detailed explanation of the beat matrix may help in understanding the table. For understanding the Condorcet method, the Wikipedia entry is fairly informative.

Option 1 "Jeroen van Wolffelaar"
Option 2 "Ari Pollak"
Option 3 "Steve McIntyre"
Option 4 "Anthony Towns"
Option 5 "Andreas Schuldei"
Option 6 "Jonathan aka Ted Walther"
Option 7 "Bill Allombert"
Option 8 "None of the Above"

**The Beat Matrix**
	Option
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Option 1		310	123	144	166	341	228	319
Option 2	40		34	46	45	246	48	158
Option 3	230	332		184	233	354	278	344
Option 4	230	334	190		242	365	281	339
Option 5	166	320	124	135		352	240	321
Option 6	20	61	16	16	16		21	73
Option 7	119	275	68	99	117	321		294
Option 8	75	202	53	71	75	301	87

Looking at row 2, column 1, Ari Pollak
received 40 votes over Jeroen van Wolffelaar

Looking at row 1, column 2, Jeroen van Wolffelaar
received 310 votes over Ari Pollak.

Pair-wise defeats

Option 3 defeats Option 1 by ( 230 - 123) = 107 votes.
Option 4 defeats Option 1 by ( 230 - 144) = 86 votes.
Option 1 defeats Option 7 by ( 228 - 119) = 109 votes.
Option 1 defeats Option 8 by ( 319 - 75) = 244 votes.
Option 4 defeats Option 3 by ( 190 - 184) = 6 votes.
Option 3 defeats Option 5 by ( 233 - 124) = 109 votes.
Option 3 defeats Option 7 by ( 278 - 68) = 210 votes.
Option 3 defeats Option 8 by ( 344 - 53) = 291 votes.
Option 4 defeats Option 5 by ( 242 - 135) = 107 votes.
Option 4 defeats Option 7 by ( 281 - 99) = 182 votes.
Option 4 defeats Option 8 by ( 339 - 71) = 268 votes.
Option 5 defeats Option 7 by ( 240 - 117) = 123 votes.
Option 5 defeats Option 8 by ( 321 - 75) = 246 votes.
Option 7 defeats Option 8 by ( 294 - 87) = 207 votes.

The Schwartz Set contains

Option 4 "Anthony Towns"

The winners

Option 4 "Anthony Towns"

Debian uses the Condorcet method for votes. Simplistically, plain Condorcet's method can be stated like so :
Consider all possible two-way races between candidates. The Condorcet winner, if there is one, is the one candidate who can beat each other candidate in a two-way race with that candidate. The problem is that in complex elections, there may well be a circular relations ship in which A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A. Most of the variations on Condorcet use various means of resolving the tie. See Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping for details. Debian's variation is spelled out in the the constitution, specifically, § A.6.