11. Wahl des Anwender-Vertreters im ICOA muß wiederholt werden

Wegen Unstimmigkeiten wurde beschlosssen, die Wahl des Anwender-Vertreters
für das "Steering Committee" des ICOA (Industry Council for Open AMIGA) zu 
wiederholen. Noch bis zum 30. Mai kann jeder, der in diese Funktion gewählt 
werden möchte, seine Kandidatur anmelden. Anschließend finden die Wahlen 
statt. 
Alle Einzelheiten sind der folgenden Information zu entnehmen:

»The 1998 ICOA User Representative election
 ------------------------------------------

An election was started at the beginning of March to appoint a User
Representative to the ICOA's Steering Committee for the next year.
The election was run by the Jay Miner Society, which was appointed by
the Transitional Steering Committee of the ICOA to do this.
Nominations were opened for a period of two weeks, and voting began a
week after that for another two weeks.

It was clear from the beginning that this was a tight schedule, and a
number of mistakes were made.  The nomination period was too short and
not sufficiently well publicised.  The voting was also poorly
publicised.  As a result, several potential candidates were unable to
complete their nominations in time, and others may have unaware of the
election until it was too late.  A disappointingly small number of
votes was cast, and three of the candidates were all but tied, with
several fraudulent votes making it difficult to decide clearly whether
any had won.

After consultation with the candidates, the Steering Committees of the
ICOA and the JMS decided to begin the election again.  The JMS will be
working closely with Team Amiga, the User Group Network, and Amiga
magazines to make as many people as possible aware of the election and
able to vote.

Nominations
-----------

Nominations will be open until 30th May.  Please make your readers
aware that they can nominate candidates if they are quick!

Here's the text from the original press release about the role of User
Representative:

"The User Rep will have a full voting seat on the Steering Committee
for a period of one year, alongside the four seats for those elected
by ICOA members and a permanent non-voting veto seat occupied by an
Amiga Inc representative.  This position, combining the roles of
consumer advocate, opinion-gatherer, strategist and community liaison,
will require a serious commitment of time and effort.  The JMS and
other user organizations will provide support for this.  The Committee
will have face-to-face meetings roughly every 3 months, and will also
attend selected Amiga shows.  Expenses incurred by the User Rep in
attending these events will be paid for by the ICOA."

Postal nominations require:

* Name and signature of the candidate, with either an e-mail address
  or a postal address and phone number.

* Full names and signatures of five supporters, with either an e-mail
  address or a postal address and phone number for each one.

* A statement that the candidate and supporters accept the election
  procedures and the decisions of the arbiters.  (The procedures will
  be available on the JMS web site.)

* An election statement of no more than 500 words for the JMS election
  web site to publish on the nominee's behalf.  (The JMS reserves the
  right to reject any statement whose contents do not appear to be
  legal for it to publish.)

Nominations should be sent to:

USA/Canada	Andrew Bienhaus
		90 Farr Crescent
		Cambridge
		Ontario N3C 1R6
		Canada

UK		Ben Hutchings
		19 Lewell Avenue
		Marston
		Oxford OX3 0RL

Voting
------

The list of candidates should be announced on 2nd June, on the JMS web
site, other Amiga news web sites, newsgroups, and BBSs.  If your
readers can get access to the WWW, USENET, or Fidonet, then they
should be able to get the list of candidates and their statements.

Please print some kind of distinctive voting form in your magazine.
This should limit the potential for voting fraud (which, as I said,
did occur in the previous cancelled election).  I've attached a
grey-scale copy of the election logo to this message; perhaps you
could include that in the form?

Postal votes must include:

* The full name and postal address of the voter.

* The name of the candidate being voted for, as given on the list of
  candidates.

It will also be possible to vote on the WWW or by e-mail (Internet or
Fidonet).  Details will be announced later through those networks.

Election web site
-----------------

The URL is <http://www.jms.org/election/>.  This is where the full
rules of the election, statements, press releases, voting forms, etc,
will be available.  Please include the URL in your report.


-- 
Ben Hutchings -- should be revising | Jay Miner Society:
http://www.jms.org/ m95bwh@ecs.ox.ac.uk   |  
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc0223/   |   IRC: Womble Never put off till
tomorrow what you can avoid all together.«