Editorial

Conflicts of Interest

The election for Zone 1 Coordinator is in full swing. As of this writing, three candidates have been nominated and accepted, though the nominations are still open. Individuals monitoring the election process have noted two instances where candidates my have a conflict of interest and have asked, properly, that potential improprieties be addressed and guarded against.

The first potential conflict of interest involves me personally. This week, I accepted nomination as a candidate for the Z1C office. It was suggested that acting as Editor Pro Tem of Fidonews gives me an unfair advantage over other candidates, and that I should resign.

This places me on the horns of a dilemma in that 1) I certainly want to maintain propriety as a candidate for Z1C and 2) I want to honor the prior commitment I made to Henk Wolsink to keep Fidonews flowing while he enjoys his vacation. After due consideration, I've decided to put together Fidonews until the June 28th edition, thus honoring my prior commitment to Henk. At that time, I will cease and turn all relevant material over to Henk. At that point, my association with Fidonews becomes that of any other Fido member.

In the meantime, I'll honor Fidonews' long-standing practice of publishing all articles submitted irregardless of political content. In practice, this means that any candidate or anyone supporting a candidate has my pledge that their own article will see publication.

The second conflict of interest noted involves each of the other two candidates. The Z1C election is not determined by direct sysop vote, but rather by the ten RCs of zone 1. They have pledged to gather regional input and vote for Z1C according to this input. The conflict is that each of the other two candidates are sitting RCs, and thus could "control" 20% of the effective vote.

While it would be ideal if the election mechanics provided for a way to avoid this situation, I believe that we're too far into the election process to rewrite the mechanics. The best course is to rely on these RCs pledge to vote for Z1C according to their region's input. Dallas Hinton and David Moufarrage are principled individuals, and I'm satisfied that they will not resort to anything unscrupulous to win the election. I've suggested to these candidates that they do their best to make their region's input known to all in the Z1_ELECTION echo and possibly have a neutral third party handle the gathering of input.