Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Election/Rules

ACERFC decisions to date (WP:ACERULES)


 * Election: There will be 15 arbitrators, seven seats on "Tranche Alpha" and eight seats on "Tranche Beta" from the 2019 elections. A maximum eight 2-year terms are up for elections each year, with the eighth seat switching tranche if necessary. Any expected midterm vacancy, announced before voting begins and taking effect prior to 1 January, that brings the total number of vacancies above eight will be filled by a 1-year term. A minimum 50% support is required to be elected for a 1-year term, and a minimum 60% support is required for a 2-year term. Successful candidates with the lowest support percentages are given the 1-year term if any. If there are more vacancies than candidates with the required minimum, the extra seats will remain unfilled until a special or the next regular election. Vacancies arising between elections will remain unfilled until a special or the next regular election.
 * Special Election: An interim special election which is called by the Arbitration Committee in accordance with the Arbitration Policy shall be conducted on an abbreviated timeline.
 * Electoral Commission: The previous Election Commission shall be reappointed unless they are unable or unwilling to perform the job, in which case members of the current functionaries team who are not arbitrators or WMF staff will be asked to volunteer without the need for confirmation. The Election Commission is empowered to resolve by majority vote situations unforeseen in the previous election RfC that may prevent emergency or interim elections from being held.
 * Nominations period: One week.
 * Voting period: As soon as possible after the close of nominations.
 * Terms of office: To the end of the year.
 * Number of vacancies: Up to the size of the committee authorized in the previous election RfC.
 * Candidates: Registered account with 500 mainspace edits that is not prevented from submitting their candidacy by a block or ban, meets Foundation's Access to nonpublic personal data policy, and has disclosed alternate accounts (or disclosed legitimate accounts to Arbcom).  Arbitrators may not serve as members of either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee while serving as arbitrators. Withdrawn or disqualified candidates will be listed in their own section on the candidates page unless their candidate page can be deleted under WP:G7.
 * Electoral Commission: An RFC to appoint 3 Electoral Commission officials who will solve disputes and problems during the election. Open to anyone who is over 18, meets Foundation's Access to nonpublic personal data policy, and otherwise be eligible to vote. Officials will not be allowed to assess private matters and/or have access to voter data, and/or related permissions, and will instead defer private matters to the current ArbCom and/or the WMF as needed. Commissioners, and reserve commissioners, may not run for election to the Arbitration Committee during their term.
 * Timeline: In the event of significant technical or other issues affecting the election, the election commissioners may adjust the deadline of the affected part(s) of the election process, and/or any subsequent parts, by a commensurate amount.
 * ACE RFC: (30 days of September)
 * Electoral Commission RFC: 7 days nominations during a pre-RfC drafting process, 7 days evaluation, selection by 7 days after close of evaluation. (October)
 * Nominations: Second Sunday of November (10 days)
 * Nomination is hard deadline for creation and transclusion of nomination statement. How to handle any site-wide disruption is at the discretion of the Electoral Commission. The self-nomination will only be considered completed if both the nomination page has been created, and the page has been properly transcluded to the candidates page prior to the cut-off time as recorded by the server. Candidate directions should suggest not attempting to perform this activity very close to the cut-off time, so there will be time to recover should any user or technical errors occur.
 * Fallow period: (5 days)
 * Voting period: (14 days)
 * Voting starts at 00:00 UTC on the second business day of the week in San Francisco (in San Francisco local time, 4 PM on the first business day of the week).
 * Scrutineering: No deadline for releasing or announcing the results.
 * Guides: Allowed but with some strong suggestions. Must be allowed reasonable visibility. In the case of dispute about the content of an election guide, the election commissioners are empowered to make a binding decision for the purpose of ensuring a fair election and compliance with acceptable uses of election guides. Such decisions are to be based on core Wikipedia policies and guidelines, Arbitration Committee Election RFC decisions and their own discretion. The electoral commissioners can remove content from guides, including (partially) blanking a guide, add official commentary to guides, and remove a guide from the official templates and/or categories. Candidates do not have an explicit right of reply to comments about them made in election guides. The content of election guides must comply with all relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines, including but not limited to No personal attacks and Civility. Any editor may add guides to official templates or categories for guides. A candidate who writes a guide must declare in the guide that they are a candidate.
 * General Guide: 5 Minute guide to ArbCom Elections created and advertised.
 * Voter Suffrage: A voter needs 150 mainspace edits on English Wikipedia by 1 November, 10 live edits on English Wikipedia (in any namespace) within one year of 1 November, and to have registered an account before 1 October, not currently sitewide blocked at the time of voting. These requirements must be met from the same named account. Vanished or renamed users carrying the name "Vanished" or "Renamed" are excluded from eligibility to vote. Bots are excluded from eligibility to vote.
 * Voting System: Voting system of (Support/Neutral/Oppose) will be used with percentages calculated via Support/(Support + Oppose). Secret ballots via SecurePoll will be used. If a candidate withdraws from the election between the start of voting and the end of voting, then the final results will be calculated as if the withdrawn candidate never ran.
 * Scrutineering: 3 functionaries from outside en.wiki as scrutineers. Scrutineers will strike all the votes cast by any sockmaster who voted multiple times, independent of whether the editor was blocked before or after casting the votes.
 * Ordering: The order of candidates is shuffled randomly whenever the page is purged. Candidates are also ordered randomly on the ballot.
 * Warning: Potential candidates are warned of risks from standing for election with message similar to that on WP:CUOS2015 to be incorporated into the candidate instructions page.
 * Questions: No standard questions for every candidates. There is a limit of 2 questions per editor per candidate, with reasonable follow-up questions. Questions can only be posed to candidates after the nomination period is over. Candidates are not obligated to answer every question. Electoral Commission (as a group, not individually) have the discretion to remove offensive (e.g. WP:POLEMIC-style statements) or off-topic questions from question pages, following discussion among the Electoral Commission members, but has no authority to reword questions to the candidate. Any candidate that feels a question should be removed/reviewed should contact the electoral commission to review the question, and not take action themselves. While other editors can obviously remove clear vandalism, egregious personal attacks, etc., the determination of what is inappropriate or off-topic is clearly to be left to the Commission. Guidelines for content allowed and disallowed on candidate pages was introduced, with the electoral commission empowered to make decisions on inclusion or removal of related content, inappropriate questions are only to be removed by their author or members of the electoral commission.
 * Advertising: Traditional notices posted to various community noticeboards, watchlist notice, and, optionally, central notice banner at the discretion of the election commission for the election in general (not individual candidates); the Site Notice should not be used; Mass Message – eligible voters, have edited last 12 months before nominations, but excluding site -blocked users where the block duration extends past the the elections, globally b/locked accounts, bots, and accounts in Category:All Wikipedia bots, Category:Wikipedia alternative accounts, Category:Wikipedia doppelganger accounts, and Category:Deceased Wikipedians. Extra care should be taken in wordings of advertising to make sure it is neutral.
 * Blocking: Blocking policy applies normally, but a candidate shouldn't be disqualified for being blocked (except for sockpuppetry) after nominating themselves.