[council] Election No. 3 - Explanation and Proposed Action.

[Dennis Jennings <Dennis.Jennings@ucd.ie>]

Dear Colleagues,

First - my apologies for the delay in getting back to you after the 
suspended election yesterday.  I have only just now got back my access to 
my e-mail.

Elisabeth has already explained to you what happened.  In simple terms an 
error was made in counting the first round of Election No. 3 (ballot 8), 
but this was not discovered until the third round (ballot 10) was in 
progress.

I have examined the record carefully, and taken advice from Andrew 
McLaughlin, and I am satisfied that the voter's intent was clear, that the 
voter's intended vote was miscounted (due to a subsequent vote, made in 
error), and that the miscount was not entirely the fault of the voter.

Since the miscounted vote would have materially altered the outcome of the 
ballot, had it been properly counted, I very strongly recommend to the 
Names Council that the proper course of action is to repeat the voting 
round in which the error occurred.

In other words, I very strongly recommend that we restart the Election No. 
3 at the beginning with round 1.  (The ballot number will be 11).  In my 
view any other course of action will expose the Names Council to endless 
charges of fraud, misconduct, etc., etc.

As the Names Council's current temporary acting teleconference chairman, I 
believe that it is my responsibility to make a decision in this sort of 
situation, and I therefore call the restart of the third election.

I propose that the first round of voting will start at 15:00 CET on Monday. 
 In order not to have any repeat of the problems we experienced, I propose 
that each round of voting take 1 hour - voting to be completed within 35 
minutes and e-mailed to Elisabeth, the votes acknowledged by Elisabeth by 
e-mail and checked by each Names Council member individually within 55 
minutes, and results to be available and the next vote to start after 60 
minutes.  Round 1 will start at 15:00 CET, Round 2 will start at 16:00 CET, 
and Round 3 will start at 17:00 CET.  If additional rounds are required, 
they will continue on Tuesday.

I apologise sincerely that Names Council members were left uninformed 
yesterday -  I tried to respond to every message I received as quickly as I 
could.  I had to leave yesterday evening to an important social engagement, 
and since then I have been out of e-mail contact until now.

Talk to you on Monday at 15:00 CET.

Thanks
Dennis