IFCS ELECTION RULES 1. The IFCS Election Rules describe the details and the organization of the elections of -- the President-Elect -- the Secretary -- the Treasurer -- the Publication Officer -- the four additional Members of the Council as far as they are not yet specified by the IFCS Constitution. The IFCS Council can apply them in an analogous way to any other election of persons in the IFCS. 2. The election of IFCS officers (as specified above) is controlled and conducted by an IFCS Election Committee which consists of 4 members, from different IFCS Member Societies or Groups. The members of the Election Committee are assigned by the IFCS Council, usually for a term of four years. All Committee members must be IFCS Council members. Every year, in March, the Committee member with the longest membership period is replaced and a new member is assigned. The IFCS President may ask the presidents of the IFCS Member Societies or the Council members for a proposal. No Committee member may serve for more than two terms of office. The Chair of the Election Committee is determined by the members of the Election Committee from the members of the Election Committee in April of each year. During his/her office, no member of the Election Committee can be a candidate for an office in the Executive Committee. 3. The Chair organizes and conducts the election procedures in cooperation with, and with information to, the other members of the Election Committee. This includes: _ asking for candidatures from the IFCS Member Societies or Groups, _ contacting eventual candidates and setting up the lists of candidates, _ sending the voting sheets to the Council members with voting rights, _ determining the results of the ballots (see below), _ informing the Executive Committee and the Council of the results, and _ publishing the names of the elected persons in the IFCS Newsletter. Unless the Council decides otherwise, the Chair of the Committee collects the votes; he/she and the IFCS Secretary shall count the votes and then the Chair will provide an election report to the Executive Committee and the Council. If an election includes the office of the IFCS Secretary, the IFCS Secretary will not be involved in this process, but the Chair determines another Committee member (or, if all Committee members agree, another member from his own Member Society) for counting and reporting purposes in this election round. This rule may also be applied in cases where the IFCS Secretary is hindered, e.g., by a too large geographic distance. The IFCS Secretary supports the Election Committee in its tasks as far as appropriate. 4. Elections for the Executive Committee and the additional Council members should be organized from 1st October (asking for candidates) to 31st December (voting results) of the corresponding year. Voting forms with candidate lists and the IFCS Election rules should be sent to the Council members by 20th November with a deadline of three weeks for answering. 5. The following system of preferential voting (Hare system), or any alternative system that yields the same final results, shall be used to conduct elections of the Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, Publication Officer and the four additional Members of Council. 5.1 One candidate to be elected (a) On the ballot for a single election, the voter is asked to rank the candidates in order of preference (with the most preferred candidate first). If a return omits some candidates, it is called incomplete. (b) If desired, the ballots may be aggregated to reduce subsequent effort without changing the election results: this means bringing together all ballots which share a common preference order and replacing them by a single ballot which shows the number of voters represented as well as the preference order. (c) To insure that some candidate obtains a majority, the procedure below does not ignore the candidates omitted from an incomplete ballot, but treats them as tied for a rank below the included candidates. In particular, if all the candidates who are included in an incomplete ballot have been eliminated from consideration, then the ballot is called undecided. If there are K candidates still remaining, the procedure below treats an undecided ballot as providing a fractional vote of size 1/K for each remaining candidate. (d) In counting the ballots during a single election, the ballots are first arranged in piles according to the most preferred candidate, one pile for each candidate. Then the number of voters represented by each pile is determined and recorded for use in the election report. These piles remain identified with the same candidates throughout the counting procedure. (e) If one pile represents more than half the voters, the corresponding candidate has a majority in the ordinary sense and the candidate is elected. But if there is no such majority, candidates are eliminated one by one, beginning with the least popular, until one has a majority, as follows: (1) The thinnest pile, that is, the pile representing the fewest voters, is selected, and the corresponding candidate is eliminated. Each ballot from the thinnest pile is distributed into another pile according to the most preferred candidate on the ballot who has not been eliminated. After this distribution, the number of voters represented by each remaining pile is again determined and recorded. If one pile now represents more than half the voters, the corresponding candidate is elected. If not, the procedure in this paragraph is repeated until one pile represents more than half the voters and the corresponding candidate is elected. (2) If an incomplete ballot comes up for distribution to another pile, and all candidates it includes have been eliminated, the ballot is considered undecided and it is placed in a special pile for undecided ballots. When calculating the number of votes represented by each ordinary pile, the total votes represented by the undecided pile are split equally among all remaining candidates, using fractional votes if necessary. (3) If two or more piles are tied when a thinnest pile is to be selected, then the following tie-breaking process is used. From among the piles tied for thinnest is selected the pile (or piles) whose candidate has the fewest first place votes. If two or more thinnest piles still remain, then from among them is selected the pile (or piles) whose candidate has the fewest second place votes. This process is continued as long as necessary, using third place votes, fourth place votes, etc., to select a single thinnest pile. If at the end of the tie-breaking process two or more thinnest piles still remain, then these remaining thinnest piles have their candidates eliminated simulta- neously, and all their ballots are distributed in a single process. However, in the rare event that all remaining piles were tied for thinnest and that they are all still tied after the tie-breaking process, then elimination would not leave any piles at all. In this case, no elimination is done, and selection of the winning candidate from among those not yet eliminated is referred to the Council, who may choose by any method they desire. If the Council is unable to reach a decision, then the winning candidate is chosen by rolling dice or some similar method. 5.2 Several candidates to be elected If M nominees are to be chosen in a single election where M is 2 or more, such as in the election of additional Members to the Council, then this election will be carried out in M consecutive steps. In the first step, the winner is determined by the counting procedure described above. In the second step, the winner from the first step is eliminated from consideration, and a second winner is determined by the same counting procedure. If M is greater than 2, further similar steps are used as often as necessary. 5.3 Reporting the election results The report for each election consists of a table listing all candidates, with the number of voters that were represented by each pile after each distribution. In addition, if there were any ties for thinnest pile as specified above, the report also includes the counts that were needed to resolve the ties. 5.4 Simultaneous candidature for several different positions If anyone is a nominee in elections for two (or more) positions, and may only be elected to one of the positions, then the elections are counted in order of decreasing importance (as determined by the Council) or decreasing length of term (for positions otherwise the same). Anyone who becomes ineligible for a later election due to winning an earlier election is eliminated from the later election, and ballots are distributed to other candidates in the manner described above.