Movement Charter/Ratification/Voting

Movement Charter

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Ratification vote

FAQ

Voting to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter was held 25 June–9 July 2024.

Background

See also: Movement Charter/Ratification/April 2021 proposal and Movement Charter/Ratification/April 2023

This vote was organized in accordance to these two documents:

• Movement Charter chapter on Ratification; and
• Movement Charter supplementary document on ratification methodology.

Voting process

The voting period was from June 25, 2024 at 00:01 UTC to July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC.

Individual vote

If you are eligible to vote:

1. Review the resources for voters.
2. Decide whether to support or oppose the adoption of the Charter. If opposing, write down recommended changes to the Charter to include with your vote.
3. Learn how to record your vote with SecurePoll.
4. Go to the SecurePoll voting page and follow the instructions.
5. Remind other community members to vote.

Affiliates vote

The Affiliates vote will be carried out using SecurePoll, with only the designated voters able to access the voting interface. The SecurePoll for the affiliate vote will be hosted as a local election on Meta, and the list of voters will be publicly visible. The personal information of the designated voter will be treated with the same level of confidentiality as is detailed in the WMF Privacy Policy as the vote will take place on a WMF site.

Resources for voters

Voter eligibility criteria

Main page: Movement Charter/Ratification/Voting/Eligibility criteria

For a quick verification of whether you are eligible to vote or not, please use the AccountEligibility tool.

Reading materials

Here are some materials that voters can read before casting their vote:

• Final text of the Movement Charter (translated by contracted translators into Arabic, Czech, Persian, French, German, Hausa, Hindi, Igbo, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese)
  • Summary of the Charter text (474 words, ~3 minutes reading time)
  • .pdf version of the final text (English)
  • Audio versions of the final text in English, Igbo, Arabic, Kannada, Spanish and Indonesian
• Supplementary documents to the Movement Charter, which provide further context on the Charter’s content, include information on topics related to the Charter, MCDC's suggestions for policy or process development or consideration by the Global Council after the Charter is ratified, orrocesses related to the Charter ratification vote. They are not part of the Charter, therefore not included in the ratification vote.
• High level analysis of the content, a response to the prior community feedback and requests asking for an overview of what are the actual proposed changes of the Charter.
• Frequently asked questions about the ratification vote

Results

as announced by the Charter Electoral Commission on July 18, 2024

Hello everyone,

After carefully tallying both individual and affiliate votes, the Charter Electoral Commission is pleased to announce the final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter voting.  

As communicated by the Charter Electoral Commission, we reached the quorum for both Affiliate and individual votes by the time the vote closed on July 9, 23:59 UTC. We thank all 2,451 individuals and 129 Affiliate representatives who voted in the ratification process. Your votes and comments are invaluable for the future steps in Movement Strategy.

The final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting held between 25 June and 9 July 2024 are as follows:

Individual vote:

Out of 2,451 individuals who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 2,446 have been accepted as valid votes. Among these, 1,710 voted “yes”; 623 voted “no”; and 113 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 73.30% voted to approve the Charter (1710/2333), while 26.70% voted to reject the Charter (623/2333).

Affiliates vote:

Out of 129 Affiliates designated voters who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 129 votes are confirmed as valid votes. Among these, 93 voted “yes”; 18 voted “no”; and 18 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 83.78% voted to approve the Charter (93/111), while 16.22% voted to reject the Charter (18/111).

Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation:

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted not to ratify the proposed Charter during their special Board meeting on July 8, 2024. The Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Nataliia Tymkiv, shared the result of the vote, the resolution, meeting minutes and proposed next steps.  

With this, the Wikimedia Movement Charter in its current revision is not ratified.

We thank you for your participation in this important moment in our movement’s governance.

The Charter Electoral Commission,

Abhinav619, Borschts, Iwuala Lucy, Tochiprecious, Der-Wir-Ing

Electoral Commission

Contact us:
cecwikimediaorg

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees committees Governance Committee Audit Committee Talent & Culture Committee Product & Technology Committee Community Affairs Committee Staff committees Communications committee Community-wide committees Affiliations Committee Language committee Wikimania Committee Movement governance committees Elections Committee Ombuds commission Case Review Committee UCoC Coordinating Committee Movement-wide preparation committees Movement Charter Drafting Committee Charter Electoral Commission U4C Building Committee UCoC drafting committees Resources allocation committees Conference Support Committee Regional Fund Committees All Wikimedia committees Committee Support team (WMF)

The Charter Electoral Commission (CEC) is a temporary commission formed specifically to provide guidance, support and management of the voting process seeking ratification of the Movement Charter. Its work will be complete at the time the vote result is published. The commission is responsible to:

• Work with the selected MCDC members to finalize rules of the election
• Formalize process for addition of voters to the SecurePoll voter list
• Review, improve, and finalize the voting process for affiliates
• Directly manage the affiliate voting process
• Oversee the SecurePoll voting process
• Resolve unplanned or unexpected issues that arise during both the affiliate and SecurePoll voting processes
• Act as liaisons with WMF staff assigned to the technical aspects of SecurePoll
• Act as liaisons with scrutineers
• Announce the result of the affiliate and SecurePoll voting processes

Members

• Abhinav619
• Borschts
• Iwuala Lucy
• Tochiprecious

MCDC liaisons

• Risker
• Ciell

Advisor

• Der-Wir-Ing

Vote scrutineers

The scrutineers are responsible for completing the scrutineering of votes, signing off that scrutineering is complete, and they present their confirmation to the CEC, which is responsible to run the final tally and to report the final results. For the purpose of this vote, the scrutineers will be following a slightly modified version of the English Wikipedia election scrutineer guide.

• Superpes15
• EPIC
• Yahya
• Johannnnes89

Support staff

• Kaarel Vaidla
• Nhu Phan
• Ramzy Muliawan
• Aida Akhmedova
• Joe Sutherland
• Nahid Sultan