Dear Jess and Cosmos Int'l committee, Jess asked me to contribute ideas for or actually oversee the annual elections this year. I've thought a bit about this, and here are my ideas: Process Incumbents write or update publicly available descriptions of their jobs, criteria for candidates, and benefits of office Somehow we appoint a committee of three (?) people Discuss: term of office Solicit nominations, typically with one statement of goals by the candidate and with one statement of support. Candidates may stand for more than one office, but may only hold one No voter registration: voters mention how long they have been on the email list. Members who have been on the list for at least 1 month prior to the announcement of the election may vote. If there is no contest for a position, there is no vote. Ballots are just a reply to an email message, or a paper letter. Voting should be done by Instant Runoff Voting (e.g., see www.fairvote.org), which means that each voter ranks as many candidates as she chooses for each position. Once all the preferences are collected, a process of elimination occurs: Only the top of each voter's list is considered in each automatic "round", and the bottom candidate is eliminated. However, I don't think we need even have elections this year. I think after the first steps, above, and asking for interest in positions the interested people can just consense on who takes which job. People can even step forward this way without know which job specifically they would like to take on. Voting will be important later on, when there may be more candidates. Instead, I would suggest we have a survey of the membership. Have you UAS'd? What do you think it accomplished? If you were in Africa with a group and a truck again, what might you do differently? Any suggestions for organisational structure of CE? Where other than S Africa would you most like CE to make contact? Suggested modules/topics for a visit? How much time do you most like spending with each student? At each school? Thanks, CPBL