Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-07-16/Board elections

This week, the Signpost covers the results of this year's Board elections.

In an announcement late Thursday evening, the Wikimedia Board Election Steering Committee announced the results of the 2007 Board Elections: Incumbents Erik Möller (Eloquence) and Kathleen Walsh (Mindspillage) were re-elected for a two-year term, with Frieda Brioschi (Frieda) narrowly edging out incumbent Oscar van Dillen (Oscar) for the third and final seat.

Möller finished in first, with 1,671 votes (40.1% of the vote), and Walsh finished in second with 1,427 votes (34.2%). The race for the third and final position was unusually close, with third (Brioschi) and fourth (van Dillen) separated by just 20 votes, or less than one-half of one percent of the 4,170 valid ballots cast in the election. In three prior board elections, the closest vote was a difference of just eleven votes in 2004, when Florence Devouard defeated Möller, 269-258 for one of the two seats; however, that vote was a difference of just over one percent.

Behind Brioschi and Van Dillen, who held 1,254 and 1,234 votes, respectively, was Michael Snow, who took fifth with 1,229 votes, just five votes behind Van Dillen. Danny Wool finished in sixth with 1,217 votes.

The Board of Trustees officially approved the results, and all users have officially taken their positions, which will last until July 14, 2009.

This year's elections set a record, by far, for the number of valid ballots cast. The 2004 elections received 1,088 votes; in 2005, the elections received 1,484 votes, and in 2006, 2,347 ballots were cast; this year's 4,170 valid ballots represent a 78% increase over the elections held in 2006. This year's elections also show much more turnout from the English Wikipedia than in previous years; in 2005 and 2006, English Wikipedia voters accounted for 48.92% and 45.27% of the vote, respectively. In this year's elections, English Wikipedia voters accounted for 58.67% of all votes (statistics were not kept for 2004's elections).

The final results of the election were as follows:

The next elections to the Board of Trustees will be in June or July 2008. Florence Devouard's seat is currently the only seat up for re-election, though current board expansion plans call for two new seats to be added, with elections for these seats in June 2008. If these plans are enacted as anticipated, it is unclear whether the seats will be filled temporarily, as was the case when Walsh and van Dillen took expansion seats in December 2006, or whether they will first be filled by the 2008 elections.

July 30: Interviews with the elected trustees.