-DRAFT ONLY: DO NOT SIGN THIS YET
-================================
-
-This petition is in **draft form only**. Please do not sign this yet. As you can
-see, there are already pending merge requests for changes, big and small, to this
-document. We started drafting this as a private group of small individuals, but
-we decided to move to a transparent method ourselves and it's here, but it's
-not ready to sign (even though there are actually pending sign merge request, I'll
-get back to those folks when we're ready).
-
-
-Petition to Open Source Initiative To Publish 2025 Board of Directors Election Results
-======================================================================================
-
-in the interest of community trust and transparency of process, we the
-undersigned petition the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to release the
-anonymized ballot data for OSI's 2025 Board of Directors election —
-including votes for all candidates who received any nomination.
-
-The basis for our petition is that three candidates’ votes were not counted.
-OSI states these candidates failed to follow a qualification procedure.
-Multiple candidates have confirmed that they were informed of this
-qualification procedure only after voting closed.
-
-[OSI's announcement](https://opensource.org/blog/announcing-the-new-directors-of-osi-board)
-indicates these three candidates were removed from those already-cast ballots
-before vote tabulation. (Please also
-[see *Linux Weekly News*](https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1014603/ac0cfc0a74755501/) for
-relevant press coverage of this election.)
-
-We are grateful for OSI's advisory election process. While only advisory,
-the process includes community and builds trust with Affiliates and
-Members. To retain that trust, the process must operate transparently and
-respect the electorates. OSI's credibility is at risk if it violates its
-mission — which includes “distributed peer review and transparency of
-process” (as well as consensus building and good governance). Therefore, OSI
-should candidly report the full voting results (by release of the anonymized
-ballot data) and honestly and directly, rather than obliquely, describe the
-differences between the election results and the actual Board appointments.
-
-The signed document is
-[available on Codeberg](https://codeberg.org/OSI-Concerns/election-results-2025/src/branch/main/petition.md).
-Supporters are encouraged to submit their signature through a pull
-request. If you have a relationship with OSI (e.g., a Member (even a “Basic”
-one), Former Director, etc.), pease indicate your relationship to OSI in your
+
+Petition to Open Source Initiative and To Publish 2025 Board of Directors Election Results
+================================================================
+
+We the undersigned petition the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to release
+the complete and accurate results of the 2025 Board of Directors
+Individual and Affiliate elections.
+
+In 2012, the OSI began running annual community elections, and for many
+years, those elections have determined the majority of its board
+of directors. In 2025, OSI published [overall election
+information](https://web.archive.org/web/20250319054143/https://opensource.org/about/board-of-directors/elections)
+and eventually announced that [OSI Affiliate organizations would
+nominate and elect two
+candidates](https://web.archive.org/web/20250323020823/https://opensource.org/about/board-of-directors/elections/affiliate),
+and [OSI Individual members would nominate and elect one
+candidate](https://web.archive.org/web/20250126161015/https://opensource.org/about/board-of-directors/elections/individual). Community
+elections have always been advisory to the board, but OSI has
+consistently written about board members as elected by Affiliates
+members or Individual members, including calling them Individual
+directors and Affiliate directors.
+
+
+In 2025, the polls for both elections closed on March 17th. On March
+21st, OSI posted what it claimed to be the "Complete election
+results"[4], but unfortunately, they plainly are not complete and they
+misrepresent the votes that were cast. Essentially, OSI altered the
+ballots to erase 3 of the candidates and shifted voters ranked
+preferences to fill in the gaps. We don't know if this is a very
+unfortunate mistake with some good intentions, but we have seen multiple
+OSI representatives suggesting there is nothing wrong.
+
+OSI has consistently stated[1] that the online elections are being run
+with Scottish STV (Single Transferable Vote) rules, and included a link
+to [OpaVote, detailing
+STV](https://opavote.com/methods/single-transferable-vote#scottish-stv)
+. OpaVote is a service which facilitates online elections and which OSI
+used for the collection of votes. Understanding how OpaVote was used
+helps understand exactly what went wrong. On OpaVote, anyone can sign up
+as an "election manager", and they get access to self-service forms
+which facilitate running an online election. For each of the 2
+elections, OSI logged into opavote.com as an election manager, uploaded
+a list of voter's email addresses, a list of candidates, selected
+Scottish STV rules, and clicked a button open the polls. OpaVote then
+emailed each of the voters a unique ballot url on opavote.com. Here is
+[a screenshot of an empty ballot](/osi-2025-unmarked-ballot-example.png)
+of the OSI 2025 Individual election, and [a filled in
+one](/osi-2025-marked-ballot-example.png). The only way to fill in the
+ballot is by specifying a 1st preference and then optionally 2nd, and
+then optionally a 3rd, etc. A sample ballot form from the OSI 2025
+Individual election [is
+here](https://web.archive.org/web/20250327040900/https://opavote.com/en/vote/5182543794536448?p=1),
+but beware: it requires running a nonfree javascript program. After the
+polls close, OpaVote provides the election manager an option to publish
+the voting results to the voters. OSI did not use that option. Instead,
+it seems they downloaded the ballot data, altered the ballots, and used
+this to publish altered election results. In OSI's results announcement,
+it is stated that [that 3 candidates were not included in the final
+tally because of a failure to sign an agreement with
+OSI](https://opensource.org/blog/announcing-the-new-directors-of-osi-board). They
+did not state which candidates had been removed from which
+elections. What we quickly figured out is that in the individual
+elections, Richard Fontana and Bentley Hensel were erased from final
+ballots and apparently replaced with lower preference votes or if no
+lower preference had been specified, then no preference at all. For the
+Affiliates election, the same procedure was used to erase Bradley Kuhn
+from the results.
+
+We content what hopefully seems obvious: the correct and true election
+results include the actual preferences that voters marked on their
+ballots. There are several points of evidence beyond common sense to
+show this. The link that OSI [uses to describe STV](https://opavote.com/methods/single-transferable-vote#scottish-stv)
+contains a set of rules, and the rules
+are clear that altering ballots is not an allowed part of the
+procedure. This is nothing unique to STV, this is widely accepted
+practice in elections. OpaVote states that it follows the relevant
+parts of the actual Scottish legislation
+https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2007/42/made/data.xht?view=snippet&wrap=true
+. That legislation is quite clear that there is no case in which a
+voter's list of preferences may be altered, and the full election
+results which must be announced are:
+
+> give public notice of–
+>
+> (i)the name of the candidates elected;
+>
+> (ii)the number of first and subsequent preference votes for each candidate;
+>
+> (iii)the numbers of ballot papers transferred and their transfer values at each stage of the count;
+>
+> (iv)the number of votes credited to each candidate at each stage of the count;
+>
+> (v)the number of non transferable ballot papers at each stage of the count; and
+>
+> (vi)the number of rejected ballot papers under each head shown in the statement of rejected ballot papers.
+
+Furthermore, we contacted OpaVote to find out their opinion of this
+election. In an email, they stated "I understand your point; you want
+the full results of the election to be published in the interest of
+transparency." OpaVote cannot force OSI to publish the full results, but
+they can see, just as we do, that contrary to [OSI's official
+statement](https://opensource.org/blog/announcing-the-new-directors-of-osi-board),
+the "complete election results" have not been published.
+
+According to the Scottish STV rules, even in the event of a candidate's
+death, if the full election results have already been determined, they
+must be announced. And if a candidate's death is known before an
+election's results are determined, the election is immediately canceled,
+the ballots are never counted, and the election is rerun. The three
+candidates have told us that they were disqualified after the polls had
+closed. At that point, the full results had already become available to
+OSI. Whatever disagreement OSI has or had with the three candidates, the
+voters have no part in it. We only ask OSI to live up to a simple and
+basic obligation of any election.
+
+Some of us have heard from OSI what sounded like the theory that if OSI
+had run an election without these 3 candidates, then voters would have
+voted with the same preferences as the altered ballots, so the voters
+haven't lost anything. We reject that idea. First of all, we've already
+heard that additional candidates would have run if one of the existing
+candidates had not. Secondly, there are several common and legitimate
+voting strategies which do not conform to that assumption, and the
+voters do not deserve to be punished for using them. The voters trusted
+OSI to publish their true votes and have every right to feel that trust
+has been broken.
+
+We also know that if the OSI board were to override the will of the
+voters by invoking the advisory nature of the elections, that would be
+legitimate. But at this point, we cannot agree with OSI's claim that any
+candidate has been elected by the Individual or Affiliate voters until
+we know the true election results.
+
+An [article at *LWN*](https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1014603/ac0cfc0a74755501/)
+covers many other details about related contention around this election.
+
+Many of us believe there are OSI board members and perhaps election
+candidates who will hear our petition and realize that somehow, these
+two elections have gotten off-track and steer OSI to do the right thing.
+
+
+Petition detail
+----------------
+
+This is an open petition. The signed document is available on Codeberg
+[here](https://codeberg.org/OSI-Concerns/election-results-2025), and
+supporters are encouraged to submit their signature through a merge
+request. If you have a relationship with OSI (e.g., a Member, Former
+Director, etc.), pease indicate your relationship to OSI in your
signature.
-It's suggested that OSI Affiliates have their Affiliate Representative sign
-on behalf of the organization; they and other Affiliate employees/volunteers
-can of course sign separtely on their own behalf, too.
+We ask that OSI Affiliates have their Affiliate Representative sign on behalf
+of the organization; they and other Affiliate employees/volunteers can of
+course sign separtely on their own behalf, too.
Respectfully,
-FIXME_SIGNATORIES HERE
+SIGNATORIES HERE
iankelling.org / git / election-results-2025 / commitdiff
