English Product Guides

Polls and System Elections in EarthCoop

EarthCoop has two different decision domains that should not be confused:

• Poll / internal decision voting is used to collect opinion, support a proposal, or make the kinds of decisions exposed by the relevant group workflow.
• System Election is the formal lifecycle used to select official responsibilities such as Manager and Inspector.

A poll result does not appoint a Manager or Inspector, and a System Election should not be described as an ordinary poll with a candidate list.

Polls

Poll behavior depends on the current group, role and poll configuration. Where the product exposes a poll, eligible members can use it for the decision/opinion purpose supported by that surface.

Do not infer systemic-election rights from poll access. Poll eligibility and System Election eligibility are separate contracts.

---

System Election

No formal candidate-registration stage

EarthCoop's System Election is designed without formal candidates. An eligible voter selects or proposes eligible members they trust for Manager and/or Inspector responsibility. A person does not have to register themself on a public candidate slate before another member can select them.

Legacy implementation names such as candidate_id may still appear internally in historical data or code, but they must not be interpreted as a product rule requiring formal candidacy.

Policy-driven lifecycle

The System Election lifecycle is driven by the election policy resolved for the group. Thresholds, role capacities, timing, response windows and other configurable parameters belong to that policy rather than to a Manager manually inventing a new election each time.

The current election domain separates lifecycle services for opening/closing cycles, eligibility snapshots, ballots, deterministic tallying, responsibility offers, appointments, vacancy replacement and audit events.

This separation matters because these are different facts:

1. a member is eligible to vote/select;
2. a member receives enough support to rank within a responsibility result;
3. that member is offered responsibility;
4. they accept, decline or let the offer expire;
5. an appointment is actually applied.

A high tally is therefore not the same event as acceptance or appointment.

Eligibility

Eligibility follows the canonical official group/governance topology and the role snapshot for the election cycle.

• Active members have the systemic voting/selectability rights defined by the current eligibility contract.
• Elected Inspector and Manager roles retain those personal systemic voting/selectability rights; receiving responsibility does not remove the member's own vote.
• Observer, Guest and Temporary Active roles do not gain systemic-election voting/selectability rights merely by being present in the group.
• Community/micro-location membership does not automatically become official systemic-election eligibility unless the official topology says so.

Eligibility is snapshotted for the cycle so a later incidental membership change cannot silently rewrite the historical electorate used by that election.

Voting/selecting members

During the open ballot phase, an eligible voter selects eligible members for the available responsibility positions according to policy. Capacity limits and duplicate-selection rules are enforced by the election domain.

EarthCoop does not require a member to select themself, nor does it prohibit self-selection merely because the voter and selected member are the same person where the current policy permits it.

Tally and ranking

When the ballot phase ends, the election domain closes and tallies the recorded selections deterministically. Ranking and tie behavior must be reproducible and auditable; random backfill is not an acceptable replacement mechanism.

The historical tally is preserved even when a selected person later declines responsibility.

Responsibility offer and acceptance

A ranked result creates the basis for a responsibility offer; it does not silently install the member in office.

The selected member receives the policy-defined opportunity to accept or decline. If the member declines, the offer expires, or the member is no longer valid for appointment, the appointment chain moves to the next ranked eligible member according to the stored result and policy.

This replacement process must not delete or rewrite the original tally history.

Appointment

Only after the responsibility-offer conditions are satisfied does the appointment service apply the official Manager/Inspector role and any corresponding higher-level representation side effects. Appointment is designed to be idempotent so retries do not duplicate responsibilities.

Role responsibility boundary

EarthCoop's broader responsibility rules can restrict simultaneous official responsibilities. A System Election result therefore cannot be read in isolation from current responsibility/representation policy. Higher-level or conflicting responsibility may affect whether and how an appointment is applied.

Auditability

System Election activity is designed to leave an auditable trail across lifecycle transitions, eligibility, ballots, tally/ranking, responsibility offers, acceptance/decline/expiry, replacements and appointment.

Where a vote or withdrawal supports a comment/rationale, its visibility is controlled by the current policy and user choice. Documentation must not invent privacy options that are not present in the current contract.