Due to our current Communications Manager stepping down next month, a by-election is being held to replace him.

The responsibilities of the Communications Manager role are:

• Provision of infrastructure for, and ongoing management of, all applicable internal and external communications channels run by the Pirate Party, including:
  
  • Websites, except foundation level infrastructure,
    
  • social Media,
    
  • email and related services,
    
  • forums,
    
  • collaborative editing and decision making systems.
• Ensuring the intentions of the organization are represented to:
  
  • Members,
    
  • supporters,
    
  • Media.
    Note: this excludes internal election formalities.

Nominations are open until Dec 3 at 12pm

How to nominate:

• Send an email to the returning officers
  
  • To: returningofficers@pirateparty.org.nz
• Containing:
  
  • subject line: Communications Manager Nominations
  • the full name or alias of the person(s) you are nominating (which may be/include yourself)
  • your name
  
  
• Candidates can comment in this thread in support of their candidacy
• If you are nominating someone other than yourself, they will be contacted and given the opportunity to accept or decline the nomination

Voting will be from December 8 to midnight on the 16th
Voting will be by email. Votes will be counted by the condorcet method, with condorcet cycles broken by STV.

Voting is Now Open!

Voting is open from NOW (08/12/13 10:10am) for 8 days until Monday night 16/12/13 at midnight.
If you are voting, please make sure you submit your vote as below or make arrangements with the returning officers by this time.

Candidates may introduce themselves in this thread or link to relevant information from this thread.
Anyone may ask questions of candidates here or in any other appropriate place.

Any questions about the voting process or rules please contact returningofficers@pirateparty.org.nz

Any questions about membership / eligibility to vote / validity of email addresses used for voting please contact membership@pirateparty.org.nz


How to Vote:

• There are three voting options:
  
  
  • Option 1: Simple email voting - email returningofficers@pirateparty.org.nz from an email address known to Membership admin to be associated with you.
    
    
  • Option 2: Anonymous email voting
    
    • Email returningofficers@pirateparty.org.nz from any email address, AND
      
    • Contact Membership admin (Ben V - benv@pirateparty.org.nz or otherwise) to nominate your voting email address, so that your vote can be validated.
      
    • Returning officers will not know the identity associated with the vote, Membership admin will not know the vote associated with the identity. There is no overlap between membership admin and the returning officers.
    
    
  • Option 3: vote by proxy - contact Membership admin and nominate another voting member to vote on your behalf. Please also inform the holder of your proxy vote. Multiple votes submitted by proxy vote holders do not necessarily need to be identical
    
    
  • Contact the current Executive Council for any required special arrangements
  
  
• Voting will be by Condorcet voting with condorcet cycles resolved by STV
  
  
• Rank candidates in order as shown. (You can rank any number of candidates you wish, from zero to all of them)
  
  • Candidate #1 > Candidate #2a = Candidate #2b > Candidate #4
    
  • This example is for a hypothetical scenario where you prefer Candidate #1 to the rest, and Candidates #2a and #2b equally.
  
  
• Candidates may vote for themselves and this is in no way discouraged
  
  
• Returning officers etc. may also vote, so long as they also follow the correct procedure
  
  
• No confidence:
  
  • Any candidate who is not named at all in your vote is effectively a no confidence vote in that candidate.
    
  • If the Condorcet (or STV) winner is not at least named on a majority of all votes for that position, the position will remain vacant.

Candidates:

• Bruce Kingsbury
• Rob Ueberfeldt

Hi crew

I'm running for the communications manager position in the PPNZ. Some of you will know me from my Facebook activities on the PPNZ page and from Computer Ethics discussions.

My background is as a grass roots activist working for various groups and organisations including.
NORML, ALCP, Green party and GE Free.

I'm a bit of a jack of all trades without much in the way of formal education or IT qualifications, though have spent much of my life working on computers one way or another.

I have done a lot of office communications and electioneering type work for NORML and ALCP, with more direct activism for the Greens and GE Free.

I feel confident in carrying on my roll with the FB part of social media, though communicating with the media and keeping an eye on all of our various communication channels will be challenge. I would hope that if I gained the position that who ever came second would be an 'assistant' in helping cover our communication needs. Likewise I will try and help if someone else gets it.

Thanks
Rob Ueberfeldt

And I am the other candidate in this by-election.

I've been involved with the party from the beginning, set up most of the original website, chose the colour scheme and designed the logo although I'm red-green colour blind and really shouldn't be allowed to design stuff. I have a lot of experience with the Internet and Free Software, but very little experience with politics or activism. I can claim that I marched against the Springbok tour in 1981 but not much else. Fortunately I'm not the only person involved in this party ...

I did stand for the party in the Hamilton East electorate in the previous election. A few people even voted for me!

In the run-up to the previous election I did some very bad radio interviews and one slightly-better interview for a web comedy show. These days I'm co-hosting a weekly show on community radio and can handle interviews reasonably confidently, certainly much better than I used to. I'm still a little dyslexic at times but I know the official party policy and the reasoning behind it pretty well, and I am quite prepared to be the public face of the party if nobody else wants to do it.

And this is why I like consensus rather than voting. On the basis of these candidate intros, it seems to me that the job (and it's a big one) could easily be divided up between both Rob and Bruce, with Rob taking care of the social media aspects, Bruce taking care of the website aspects, and the two working together on campaigning and mass media penetration aspects.

Of course, they can do exactly this in practice, and what we're really voting on is which of the two to put on the Board. I think it helps for as many of us as possible to serve a tour on the Board, so we get a deeper understanding of the organisation, how it's working, and how to help as volunteers once we leave the Board. I know Bruce is a past President. Rob, have you been on the Board before?

I haven't been on the board before. And I would be most happy to share duties. Not especially keen on live interviews etc.