Wikimedia Foundation elections/2020

Info The elections have not begun. Candidates and votes will not be accepted.
Help translate the election.

Wikimedia Foundation elections were planned to be held in 2020 to elect three Members of the Community seats on the Board of Trustees, as mandated by the Foundation's bylaws. In April 2020, the board announced that the voting process was being postponed ("It does not currently seem likely that the process will resume before August 2020, but we are committed to completing it before the end of June 2021").

In April 2021 the Board announced that the elections are planned to be held in July–August 2021. Four seats will be up for selection, the three due for renewal and a fourth from the approved Board expansion.

Process

The elections will be held securely using SecurePoll software. Votes are secret, and no one from the Election 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 election committee).

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). The candidates with the highest percentage of support will be recommended to the Board of Trustees for appointment.

Board of Trustees election

The dates when members of the Wikimedia community will have the opportunity to vote in the Board of Trustees election are to be determined for three members of the Board of Trustees to serve a three-year term which will expire in 2023. The Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

Information for voters and voter requirements

To be determined. Please see 2017 election page for 2017's requirements, as well as the postmortem discussion from the 2017 elections.

Information for candidates

The Board will note the skills and experiences they would like selected trustees to have. Candidates will complete the evaluation form (in English), but for information only.

Draft Timeline

  • call for candidates opening: 8 June 2021
  • voting period: 20 July 2021 to 3 August 2021