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| Kyle Beckett's list |
As one of the members of the election committee, who had gone through the list several times I immediately saw that Kyle Beckett's post and the list he posted contained several errors or erroneous information.
Below I have reviewed Kyle's list with the last list I received as a member of the committee and with the list of members in the Second Pride Festival group on August 4, 2013.
8 persons on Kyle Beckett's list had their votes registered and were in fact counted.
1. Avacar Bluestar
2. Brian Lindman
3. Gage Furman
4. Galileo Michalski
5. Hank Ramos
6. Lemondo Oh
7. Pabs Manx
8. Ricco Saenz
Throughout the election process the following message was posted on the Second Pride website:
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR MEMBERS You MUST be a member of the Second Pride in-world group before Midnight August 4th to be eligible to vote. The election committee will be cross referencing the online votes received against the in-world membership list. Please be sure to click on your name at the bottom of this screen [on the second-pride.com website, my remark] to view and/or update your online profile. Make sure your Second Life Avatar name is part of your profile so that your vote can be verified against the in-world membership.
Despite this some voters were not members in the group at midnight August 4th and some members did not update their profiles with the necessary information to separate them from others in group.
1. Asyousay (Ransom B Halcyone)
2. Cody Bolero
3. Grunt Cheveyo
4. Joseph Nussbaum
1 person did not leave additional information required to identify himher or there were several matches in the group
1. JJ on the Second Pride website could possibly be JJuray on Kyle Beckett's list, but there are at least two JJ's in the Second Pride group.it was not possible to know which of these - if any - from the information provided.
As you see from the above it would seem that Kyle Beckett was comparing the results of his check-up with an erroneous list, a list that was not the one that the election committee worked with at the end.
Ziggy Starsmith (see his blog for information on this)
That leaves us with 31 names on Kyle's list that need to be explained.
I have come up with the following three possible reasons, there may of course be more.
a) The people logged in during voting time but chose not to vote. The mere fact that someone logged into the website does not mean, as Kyle tries to imply in his post, that they in fact did vote.
b) The people who voted made a mistake so that their votes were not registered or
c) There was a technical malfunction on the website so that their votes were not registered.
Now let us ask ourselves what motivated Kyle Beckett to
1) check who had logged in to the Second Pride website during the time of voting?
2) to post the results of his findings in the way he did?
I have information from three different sources that Kyle Beckett has a close first life relationship with one of the candidates of this years election. That candidate lost in the election.
I do not at all find it strange that Kyle would wish to support his first life contact, but I question if he should not have supported his contact personally and emotionally at this difficult time in that persons life instead of bringing the whole election and Second Pride into disrepute. It is especially difficult for me to understand this as both Kyle Beckett and the candidate whom he has a first life relationship with previously have talked profusely about how they support Second Pride and the LGBT community no matter what.
It could perhaps also be interesting and even mind boggling - for those clamouring and shouting out their disgust at this time - to ask themselves if they truly believe that Kyle Beckett would have put so much energy, work and time into this if the candidates he presumably supported had won the election?
Meanwhile I am wondering who the hell gave Kyle Beckett access to a spreadsheet he should not have access to as he was not on the election committee and not one of the two directors leading the committee. And also how the hell he could access the website to gather the information when as I understand it the access to the website should have been limited to the Security Director and the first life consultant who helped with the election.
To defend myself, the list I was going by was an early list that WAS given to the election committee. It was revealed later that this was not the final list and the first list was full of errors. HOWEVER, this is the ONLY list that was provided to one of the election committee members and the FINAL LIST was NOT provided to them.
ReplyDeleteSo technically this final list was NOT approved by the entire election committee.
I did my research because it was a way to verify that the members on the list did in fact login to the Second Pride website during the election. Now that I have seen the FINAL list. There are still names that have VERIFIED they voted on Facebook that did not have votes counted.
The names on my list WERE members of the Second Pride group while registration WAS closed.
The login records for the website are PUBLIC ACCESS, anyone can view them through the directory. How did I the see the voter spreadsheet? I'm sitting next to someone who has it on their computer screen.
My thought was this was a way to see who logged into the website during the election, compare them to the voters, and see who logged in and may not have had their vote counted. Because I knew several people had errors voting and the system was flawed. It took me several hours leading up to the election results to do this. I figured if someone had voted who was on my list, they would speak up, and THEY DID.
Was this the best avenue to take, no. Could I have gone to the board with it with no proof that these people actually voted, yes. Would that have been a waste of time, probably.
I'm sorry for the drama it has caused, but I wanted to make sure this election was fair as much as anyone else did and not flawed. Unfortunately that is not the case.
The board met last night and we all agreed the system was flawed. However, we will not be holding a re-vote.
I will support Second Pride as long as Second Pride supports the community.
Thank you for your comment Kyle. I realize I may have been a bit heavy handed in my post, but I now believe what got me up in flames were mostly the comments on your post.
DeleteHopefully the newly elected board will make it a priority to ensure that we get a secure and trustworthy voting procedure for the next election.
Like you, I will continue to support Second Pride as I do believe that it will support the community.
However, I also realize the organization needs to make a more concerted effort toward a greater inclusiveness and perhaps even some affirmative actions in place so as to ensure a minimum representation for lesbians among other things.
I just removed a comment made by an anonymous person that had nothing to say on the subject that is discussed in the post, but instead launched personal attacks at several people.
DeleteI must remind you that I will not allow personal attacks on other people on this blog, especially not by anonymous commenters who have nothing to say on the subject that is being discussed.
In defense of Kyle....(slightly)... He was trying to help those that felt disenfranchised He could and should have brought these issues to the board first and might have realized that the list that he should have never had access to in the first place was flawed. Frankly, the person he got it from never should have had it either considering he was a candidate. The members that volunteered to certify the election (and BTW...any member could have come forth like several did) spent a great deal of time trying to match up incorrect names that people used when they were told to use their Second Pride avatar name. Through there work peoples votes WERE recorded that otherwise would not have been. Kyle's list is a list of people that logged onto the SP website during the 10 day election period... it's NOT a list of people that voted. I'm sorry that some people neglected to log onto the site as instructed and "voted". Those votes could not have been recorded if you were not logged on. If people attempted to vote and were not logged in, the system displayed a message instructing the user to please log on. Depending on your browser this message was displayed in different places. There was a complete review yesterday of those that logged on and voted and there are no extraneous votes found. All the votes cast were recorded.The system was not flawed. That being said, the system used may have been a bit confusing and I encourage the new Board to review the voting process and try to make it easier. Many of you have no idea of past Pride elections and how bad things were in the past. Trying to weed out alts, guarantee anonymity, and get an honest vote was difficult at best. The current board looked at "outside polling firms... but spending $1000 seemed a bit much. Rather than continue this endless bickering, name calling, and smearing, why don't those of you that have the technical knowledge let the new board know that YOU are willing to offer solutions. The most unfortunate thing about this entire display is that PRIDE has been lost in all of this. It's turned into a display of egos and character assassination. Last night I listened to group of people complaining... half of them never logged onto the site or ever registered... so they never could have voted. Another was not even a member of Pride. Pride i bigger than any one of us... I think the membership would appreciate an end to this and wants the new board given a chance to do it's job and move Pride into the future.
ReplyDeleteHi. I have a question.
ReplyDeleteOn July 7th, I attended a Second Pride board meeting, and learned that Dex would serve on the election committee. I found it odd that a candidate for an office would have any roll in the voting process so I asked about it
[11:45 AM] Karl Kalchek: just a quick question. does serving on elections oversight preclude running for an office? Just curious.
And I was told, by Dex that there would be no conflict of interest because he would merely be looking at a list of voters to make sure they were in the festival group:
[11:47 AM] Dextrum Boucher: the only job of those serving will be to look over a list of voters and make sure they are in the group, they will not be able to see the actual votes, thus there is no conflict
But now it appears that this list of voters, or some list of voters, was being cross checked against people logging into the website by the candidate and his roommate who is also a board member (although election verification responsibilities do not seem to be in the secretary co chair job description). This would theoretically provide the candidate with important information about who was voting - information unavailable to other candidates lacking these lists. One imagines this information could be used to estimate your vote totals and possibly influence the vote.
To me this seems like clear evidence of a conflict of interest. Am I missing something?
Karl
Yes, you are missing something.
ReplyDeleteDex served on the election committee because it was in the bylaws that this was one of his duties as Community Relations director. The board found no conflict of interest because if they had he would not be on the committee.
The election committee is given a list of voters AFTER the election has ended. So therefore you could not "estimate vote totals and influence the vote" as you say.
It is possible to view who has logged into the Second Pride website during the election and assume they voted. However, this is public information available to all candidates.
I respectfully disagree, Kyle. Conflict of interest rules are created both to prevent actual conflicts and the appearance of conflict.
ReplyDeleteWere the voter lists you were using published somewhere? were other candidates made aware of their existence so they to have benefited from this information?
Whatever list you were using must have seemed sufficiently accurate to you that you publicly used it as a basis to imply that voters were being disenfranchised.
1) I respectfully accept your disagreement. However, it was not my decision, it was discussed as a board.
ReplyDelete2) The voter list was never published to the public and only the election committee and people who live with them could see this information.
3) The voter list I used to compile my list was given to a member of the election committee. Yes, I live with this person. I did not know it contained errors. There was a final list of voters that was not given to them as a member of the election committee and so they did not approve the final list of voters.
Comparing the website login records to the final list of voters there are STILL names of several members of the community that have confirmed on Facebook they did vote, but are not on the voters list.
Hi Kyle.
DeleteThanks for the reply. But your response does underline the concern I have about the appearance of conflicts of interest.
It seems to me that a candidate should never play a role in monitoring the results of an election they are running in. In regards to the voter list, you say that only the election committee (and therefore the candidate and his roommate) had access to this information. It is not clear to me if this was information you and the candidate had during the election or after, but in my opinion, it would be a conflict of interest regardless. During an election access to the information on who voted would provide a mechanism to influence an ongoing vote in your favor. And after an election it should be self-evident why a candidate shouldn't participate in decisions about which votes are counted and which aren't.
I do recognize that the bylaws assign election responsibilities to the Community Relations Director. But during an election those responsibilities can be easily transferred to another board member not running for reelection.
It's clear that more work has to be done to improve the voting process and people's confidence that it is fair. And this just seems like one of many ways that confidence could be improved.
Then I guess you have your work cut out for you as the incoming Community Relations director :)
DeleteIf you are "unclear" about the election process, I suggest talking to Tootsie Nootan the election official and getting answers from the source.
Hey u Everybody ... i hope this comes with my name cuz it only seem to let me pick "anonymous" on a list of who i am so i can also tell u that i Huntington Harbour an i in second pride group and second pride web thingy an if even me can figure out to vote okay then i believe that prolly everybody else can also know how so i hope that next voting season every body can be counted plus if u can't then i happy to help. Love, Hunt.
ReplyDeleteI don't known exactly why my name shows up on the list of votes not counted. I did have trouble during the registration process, but on my 3rd attempt it accepted me and I got the ballot up and I'm positive I voted.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate I tried to vote. Sometimes these days that's all you can do.
Best to all,
Dej