LJ Election Results:

[beatrice_otter]

legomymalfoy wins!

The results are interesting, and tell me something about fandom in general, on LJ in particular, and also something about dirty politics.

First, you have to understand how the election worked: to win, a candidate needed more than 50% of the vote. If no one got a majority, the lowest count candidate was eliminated, and the second choice for his/her supporters was counted, instead. This process continues until a candidate has more than 50% of the vote. This is called an instant run-off system; it's the system of voting used in some countries. Since you get only three choices, if those three choices aren't very popular, well, your candidates might not make it far, in which case you don't have a say in further run-offs ... but you still got three chances to have a say, which is more than you get in the type of election Americans are used to, in which case if you don't vote for the candidate the majority of people in your area vote for, your vote doesn't matter. There is no perfect system of voting. Every one has both drawbacks and advantages.

In this election, it was clear that the three main candidates endorsed by fandom were top contenders, from the beginning; by the time round 19 of eliminations came around, everyone had been eliminated except legomymalfoy, rm, and vicy (the three main fandom candidates) and jameth, a candidate who got a large fraction of his vote for attacking fandom in general and legomymalfoy in particular.* It took 21 eliminations to get to a point where any one candidate had a clear majority. By that point, the only two candidates remaining were jameth and legomymalfoy. From round 1 to round 21, jameth picked up 1,330 votes as a second or third choice candidate for people whose first or second choice were eliminated. legomymalfoy picked up 3187. What this means is that there were some people who liked somebody else more than jameth, but still liked him enough to put him in their top three. legomymalfoy had three times that many people who liked her as their second or third candidate. Basically, while Jameth's tactics attracted people who were willing to make him their top candidate, they weren't very successful attracting people who might put him second or third. Either you liked him or you hated him, which is not a good strategy for a run-off type election, which may very well swing (as in this case) on people's second or third choices. It is, however, pretty predictable when you run a negative campaign.

*EDITED TO ADD: jameth and legomymalfoy both received death threats, which makes jameth's response (blaming fandom) more understandable.

Also, let's take a look at the reactions to the election results: a lot of people are saying things like "Shenanigans!" and "OMG! Lots of people's votes didn't count!" (when the election happened exactly the way LJ said it would in all their explanations). This is the way a run-off election works, people! I don't particularly like LJ's current management, and they have a bad habit of trying to ignore their users and obfuscate to keep us in the dark ... but that's not what happened this time. Many of the people who are complaining are also posting obscene pictures (so mature, there, folks) and things like "we have been snape-raped!" And this is the other predictable result of a negative campaign: when it's over, everyone is polarized and mistrustful and hate-filled. Which, if your goals are long-term enough to include what happens after the election, is a bad thing. (I realize that I contributed to the negativity with my post about jameth--but that's another thing about negative campaigns: once one side starts, the other feels pressured to respond in kind and things start a downward spiral.)

We seemed to be by far the largest voting bloc, judging both by the initial tally and by watching the run-off process work. This is surprising in some ways, not so much in others. It's surprising because "fandom" is really a large, amorphous group composed of thousands of smaller groups within, which may or may not talk to each other on a regular basis. In fact, some of which are actively quite hostile to each other. Many fandoms, particularly the larger ones, will have large groups within them that hate each other's guts, or at least try to act like it when they're forced into proximity to one another. So coming together to come up with a slate of three candidates almost everyone could agree on? Yeah. That's not something you see every day.

Why fandom coming together as a bloc for voting purposes is not surprising: we're used to being ignore and belittled by non-fans. I'm lucky, myself; my family thinks my participation in fandom is an interesting hobby, for the most part, instead of as some weird thing that proves I'm nuts and that I can't handle the real world. Unless you come from a fanish family or marry a fellow fan, the latter reaction is a lot more common. It doesn't matter what segment of fandom you're in; that's the common reaction to fannishness. When it's not like we put any more time and effort into being fannish than a diehard fan of a sports team puts into being a fan of that sports team. But even if you're lucky like me, and your family is supportive, fandom as a whole still gets belittled and discriminated against all the time. Good examples being everything from LJ's recent history to Shatner's famous "Get a life!" This inspires a kind of bunker mentality; we may have some really nasty infighting under normal circumstances, but we'll come together if there's a hint of a threat. (Whether we'll overcome our inner divisions to be able to actually accomplish something can be another matter, but at least we'll try.) So for this election process, everyone in fandom on LJ (in all its myriad forms) knew what the issues were, which candidates were likely to be supportive and which were likely to be hostile to us, and which were active fans themselves. And after some debate among ourselves, a slate of candidates were selected as THE candidates that fandom was going to throw its weight behind.

And that's the story on how legomymalfoy won the election.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

thats also the proper way to define a rigged election.

I still wish someone would give a proper explination of what you people consider fandom to be. It seems to only fall under the category of "anyone who likes/writes fanfiction" at the exclusion of thousands of other followings that have their own fandom that do not agree with you. Are you people trying to redefine the word to suit your own ends or are you just ignorant of its actual meaning and history?

[beatrice_otter]

First, please don't respond to this without some way of identifying yourself, either your LJ name or some other way. I don't appreciate people making inflammatory statements (such as claiming the election was rigged) anonymously.

Second, in what way was the election rigged? The mechanics of the election happened exactly as LJ said they were going to, and that was as a pretty much text-book case of a run-off election. Just because you did not happen to like the results does not make those results invalid. Neither does the fact that one particular group organized itself to get its members to vote in a way that no other group or individual managed. Fandom candidates were top candidates because we got organized as a group and got our members out to vote--and that's what political groups (which we aren't) and special interest groups (which we are, in this case) are supposed to do in an election. Passing out information on candidates (all of which was taken from their publicly available statements) is not rigging the election, nor is endorsing one candidate or a group of candidates. This is how elections work.

Third, I am using the terms fan and fandom in quite a specific way, you're right, but that doesn't mean I'm ignorant; I'm using the terms as they've been traditionally used in a group to which I have belonged for all of my adult life. "Fan" is a term derived from "fanatic;" we use it specifically to refer to a community (more specifically, a group of communities) that are fans of a particular type of material. Our use of the term in no way implies that other types of fans aren't fans, any more than calling baseball a "ball game" implies that no other games played with a ball are ball games as well; it's just the way the word is used in that context. Science fiction fans have been gathering as organized groups since the mid-1930's. "Fandom" as it exists on livejournal is primarily media-based (i.e. based on people who are fans of television shows and movies rather than fans of books). Much of LJ fandom is based around writing and reading fanfic, yes. Fandom as a whole (in this sense) is a group with its own culture, unwritten rules, and terminology, some of which can be confusing to outsiders. That includes both words we've made up to fit our particular needs, and words we've redefined to better fit our particular needs. Pretty much every specialized group in the history of the world has done the same. "Fandom" has existed in various forms for almost eighty years, now. There are many people who are fans of other things and not in any way shape or form connected with "fandom;" most of them are either not as big of fans (in the sense of near-fanaticism) or have their own lexicons and culture within the community of fans of whatever it is they're fans of.

[julieannie.livejournal.com]

I just want to say that 2 candidates received death threats, both LMM and Jameth.

[beatrice_otter]

Ah. Thanks for clarifying that, for me. That makes his response far more understandable.

[beatrice_otter]

The original post has been altered to reflect that. Thank you for the correction.