Richard is now counting some stats on anonymous ballots from the Board voting, and he persuaded me to publish some other, more complex stats I did on that Saturday. So, here comes.

Basic counting

Out of 219 ballots…

• 79 (36%) have all 8 candidates ranked
• 56 (26%) have 3 candidates
• 23 (11%) have 4 candidates

Richard makes a smart assumption that some people didn’t quite understand that one can submit any number of candidates, not one, not 3 (for number of seats) and not all 8. I submitted 4 candidates, because I had strong preference for Board members, and I believe that’s the case for most of 3/4 votes. And people who filled all 8 positions maybe are not happy with a tiny chance their vote will be burned otherwise.

Every candidate has been listed at each of 8 positions in ballots (that is, there is no candidate that haven’t been assigned e.g. #6 in at least one ballot).

For ballots with less than 8 positions, some of the candidates were not mentioned. Let’s count number of ballots for a candidate, where he/she is not included:

• 102 (46.6%) — Steve Coast
• 93 (42.5%) — Ethan Nelson
• 80 (36.5%) — Randy Meech
• 75 (34.2%) — Marek Strassenburg-Kleciak
• 73 (33.3%) — Paul Norman
• 64 (29.2%) — Peter Barth
• 54 (24.7%) — Kathleen Danielson
• 39 (17.8%) — Frederik Ramm

So, nearly half of voters skipped Steve (I wonder why) and Ethan (probably because he is less known than others). Frederik and Kathleen wrote a lot of good, thought-provoking posts in osmf-talk, so I hope that’s why everybody were voting for them.

Second places

We know Frederik Ramm got 78 first-rank votes, and 23 of them were distributed among other candidates. Whom?

• 27 (35%) have chosen Peter Barth as the second candidate, so he got 8 of these extra votes
• 19 (24%) have chosen Paul Norman, so he got 5.6 votes

(The rest was skipped because numbers are too small). Some of those who gave the first preference to other candidates had very strong preferences for the second place:

• 11 of those who voted for Paul (55%) have chosen Frederik as the second
• 12 of those who voted for Randy (52%) have chosen Kathleen as the second alternative

So it’s quite clear why when Randy Meech was eliminated at round 5, Kathleen was immediately elected for the second seat at the Board.

What if…

Now, what if we didn’t use STV, but went for the first preference? Here are [some of] first candidates ranks:

• 78 (35.6%) — Frederik Ramm
• 32 (14.6%) — Steve Coast
• 30 (13.7%) — Kathleen Danielson
• 23 (10.5%) — Randy Meech
• 20 ( 9.1%) — Paul Norman

You see a bit of difference with final results (Frederik, Kathleen, Paul). So, if there were 4 seats to fill, who would take it — Steve or Randy? Guess again:

• 4: Peter Barth
• 5: Steve Coast
• 6: Randy Meech
• 7: Marek Strassenburg-Kleciak
• 8: Ethan Nelson

The magic of STV! Of course, next preferences played a big role in the actual result. Let’s see who was most often mentioned as a backup candidate:

• 43 (19.6%) — Kathleen Danielson
• 41 (18.7%) — Frederik Ramm
• 35 (16.0%) — Paul Norman
• 32 (14.6%) — Peter Barth

Here they are. Let’s invent another voting system, where the first candidate gets ½ of a vote, the second — ¼ of a vote, the third — 1/8 and so on. What the results would be?

• 52.5 — Frederik Ramm
• 31.5 — Kathleen Danielson
• 24.9 — Paul Norman
• 22.9 — Peter Barth
• 21.6 — Randy Meech
• 20.6 — Steve Coast

This is where it gets complicated

Why the 5th and 6th candidates differ from STV results for 6 seats? That stems from placements variation. Let’s find a most assigned rank for each candidate. For example, Frederik was placed first in 78 ballots, and second in 41.

• Frederik Ramm: 1:78, 2:41
• Peter Barth: 3:41, 2:32
• Marek Strassenburg-Kleciak: 3:28, 4:23
• Randy Meech: 3:24, 4:24, 1:23
• Kathleen Danielson: 2:43, 1:30, 3:29
• Paul Norman: 2:35, 3:34
• Steve Coast: 8:44, 1:32
• Ethan Nelson: 5:28, 4:25

That list is hard to read, so let’s erase the ballot count:

• Frederik Ramm: 1, 2
• Peter Barth: 3, 2
• Marek Strassenburg-Kleciak: 3, 4
• Randy Meech: 3, 4, 1
• Kathleen Danielson: 2, 1, 3
• Paul Norman: 2, 3
• Steve Coast: 8, 1
• Ethan Nelson: 5, 4

Steve’s positions are interesting: mostly first and last ranks. Frederik is most favored, so 1st and 2nd ranks mostly. Others float around their ranks, not deviating much. Voting results basically reflect that: Frederik, Paul and Kathleen are closest to the top ranks, with Peter following.

Classified

We haven’t got permission to publish number of normal and associated OSMF members who voted and who were eligible to vote, but we can make some assumptions from the statistics and number of ballots.

• Members: normal + associate = total
• By October: 182 + 336 = 518
• Eligible: ? + ? = around 300 (518 minus 218)
• Voted: 106 + 113 = 219

So if we take number of voters for 73% of those eligible, we get following numbers (again, they are very approximate):

• Eligible: 145 (of 182) + 155 (of 336)

Which means that nearly half of associate members are behind on their membership payment, while most of normal members pay on time. The question is, are they behind because of financial troubles, or because they don’t care. If it’s the former, then the new policy on associated membership fees would help a lot.