Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Voting Process

The next elections to the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee will commence on 1 December 2008. These are the sixth such elections, and the newly elected members will join Tranche Beta. Voting will run for two weeks (exactly fourteen days), and the results will be determined and announced by Jimbo Wales. Nominations will be accepted from 10 November 2008 – 24 November 2008. Once nominations are open, Users may declare their candidacy by submitting a candidate statement at Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Candidate statements.

This page is for listing and describing the voting process, as well as the templates available to editors and administrators who will be assisting in monitoring the election this year.

Voting
Editors who meet the relevant criteria (Registered account with 150 mainspace edits prior to 1 November 2008) are eligible to vote for or against as few or as many candidates as they wish. Some restrictions apply, however.


 * Editors may only vote once for a candidate, whether that vote is Support or Oppose. This vote may be changed by first striking the original vote and adding a new vote.
 * Editors may not edit the votes of other editors while placing their own. Minor fixes (such as correcting indentation or numbering formats) are acceptable.
 * Editors must remain civil while voting; votes with personal attacks or other problems may be removed entirely.
 * Candidates may not vote for (or against) themselves, but may vote for or against other candidates if they so desire.

Problem Votes
During the 2007 election, over 7200 votes were cast for and against candidates. A small percentage of these were duplicate votes, votes from editors who lacked suffrage, or votes from sockpuppets. Some were simple oversights, while others were more problematic. It is in the project's best interests to deal with these problem votes in a fair and uniform manner, while avoiding biting newcomers and alienating veteran users as much as is possible.

The table below discusses some of the types of problem votes we can expect to encounter, and recommends actions that may be required in each case. Where a notice to the user is warranted, editors are asked to leave an informal note on the voter's talk page, linking to the voting page where the vote was indented.

In the interests of fairness and transparency, it is always best to be sure before taking action. Feel free to request additional input before removing a good faith vote from the count.

Templates for use in the election

 * ACE, which includes multiple options for indenting various problem votes. See the table above for specific usage.