Wikimedia Foundation elections/2020/Vote Questions

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Information for voters

How to vote

If you are eligible to vote:

  1. Read the candidate presentations and decide which candidates you will support.
  2. Go to the SecurePoll voting page.
  3. Follow the instructions on that page.

Common questions

Eligible voter is unable to vote

You may receive a message reading "Sorry, you are not in the predetermined list of users authorized to vote in this election."

Solutions

  1. Make sure you are logged in
  2. Make sure you are voting from Meta, you can use this link to go to the voting start page.
  3. If you are a developer, Wikimedia Foundation staff member, Advisory Board member, or a Funds Dissemination Committee member, the Elections Committee may not have been able to match you to a specific username. You should contact Joe Sutherland to be added to the list.
  4. If you are still unable to vote and believe you should be able to please leave a message on the election talk page or contact the elections committee at board-elections wikimedia.org.

Eligible voter wishes to change vote

Follow the same process that you did for your original vote. Your original votes will be discarded.

Security token mismatch, cannot log in

You may receive a message "Security token mismatch, cannot log in." The developers have not yet identified the cause of this problem. It will usually go away within a few hours.

Given that time is now very limited to wait for this error to be resolved, this alternative is being offered:

  1. Create an additional account based on your username with "-vote" added. For example: Jimbo-vote
  2. From your main account, post a request on the FAQ's talk page.
  3. In your request, be sure to verify that you are getting this error, and provide the username which you created in the first step.
  4. Once your vote account has been added to the voter list, you will be notified as a reply to your request.
  5. Log into the account you created in step one and you should now be able to vote.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and will continue to work on addressing this error.

I cannot log into VoteWiki

You do not need to log into VoteWiki to vote. If you see the ballot, then SecurePoll has already successfully identified you. For security reasons, only a limited number of accounts are registered on VoteWiki.

Is anyone able to see who I voted for?

No, the elections are held securely using SecurePoll software. Votes are secret, and no one from the Elections Committee, the Board, or anyone on the Wikimedia Foundation staff has access to them. The encryption key for the election is held by an independent third party; once activated, the election is halted. Some personally identifiable data on voters (for instance, IP address, user agent, and other data that is substantially similar to that obtained by the Checkuser tool) is viewable by a select few persons who audit and tally the election (the elections committee) and automatically deleted 90 days after the election.

How are the winners determined, and what is the process once voting is completed?

Voters submit votes using a Support/Neutral/Oppose system. The votes will be tallied and the candidates will be ranked by percentage of support, defined as the number of votes cast in support of the candidate divided by the total number of votes cast for the candidate ("neutral" preferences are not counted, so this is the sum of support and oppose votes) - Support/(Support+Oppose). The candidates with support from at least 10% of voters and with the highest percentage of support will be recommended to the Board of Trustees for appointment, which occurs once additional verification of requirements is completed.

How can I verify my eligibility?

Editors can utilize the AccountEligibility tool to verify eligibility in the current election. A number of tools - such as the Global account information page and Stalk toy - are available to learn more about your edit count and contribution history.

Developers, staff, board, and advisors can contact the elections committee via email at board-elections lists.wikimedia.org to verify and setup voter eligibility.

How are eligibility requirements set?

The Elections Committee sets the eligibility requirements prior to the start of the election.

Other question not mentioned here

For technical or vote system errors, please email board-elections wikimedia.org. A member of the elections committee will respond to your email as soon as possible. Please specify the username you are trying to vote with, and the project where you are trying to vote.