Eclipse Foundation Election Process

Election Process

The process for the Eclipse Foundation’s annual elections is described below.

Each year, the Eclipse Foundation holds elections for board members representing two very important groups within the Eclipse membership: the Committer Members and the Contributing Members. The number of these elected representatives is a ratio of the total number of Strategic Members.
In 2025, we expect to elect three Committer Member representatives and three Contributing Member representatives.
These elections are held pursuant to Articles 8.2 and 9.2 of the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws.
The term of office for these elected board members is one year, commencing April 1.
Voting for the elected board members is done using single transferrable voting and by secret ballot.
Each Contributing Member gets one vote.
Each Committer Member gets one vote. Note that Committers who are employees of Member companies have all the rights and privileges (including voting) of a Committer Member. Individual Committers must join the Eclipse Foundation as Committer Members by signing the Membership Agreement in order to be allowed to vote.

Eclipse Foundation Board elections are performed using a process known as single transferrable vote, which requires each voter to complete a ranked ballot. By ranked ballot, we mean that each voter ranks the candidates in their order of preference.
The advantage of this approach is being able to elect multiple candidates at the same time which reflects the voters’ preferences.
The Eclipse Foundation uses a third-party election system[1] that performs the election calculations. Elections are performed with high integrity where a unique link is created with a random and secret access key for each voter. Additionally, voter anonymity uses secret ballots ensuring voters’ choices cannot be linked to voters. Voters must rank all candidates and cannot award two candidates the same ranking.
If you are a standing candidate in an election, please know you can certainly vote for yourself! In fact, it is quite normal to rank yourself (or the organization you are voting on behalf of) as your #1 (highest) selection.
Ballots will be distributed by email on Monday, 10 February 2025, and the voting period will remain open through Friday, 28 February 2025. The newly elected Committer Member representatives and Contributing Member representatives will be announced on Monday, 3 March in the Eclipse Foundation’s Community Bulletin.