User:SHB2000/The failures of SecurePoll for U4C elections

It's safe to say that the U4C is heavily overloaded with the amount of workload they have and the reason to that can be attributed to an incredibly low number of committee members. During the 2024 U4C elections, only 7 candidates were elected, leaving the other 9 seats vacant – much of this can be attributed to the lack of qualified candidates and a large number of unqualified candidates. A special election was held later that year, but that too did not go very well either, with only 1 candidate elected, bringing the total number of members to 8. Later the total number of other changes were made such as removing the home wiki restriction. These changes did help to a certain extent and the 2025 election did see a slight uptick of qualified candidates, but despite this, the number of total members stayed the same. These changes also did not address the core issue with U4C elections: that it uses SecurePoll and not open voting – until that changes, U4C elections will always struggle to find qualified candidates up for the role.

U4C elections are unique in such a sense that even experienced candidates – candidates who are generally qualified – struggle to or barely meet the percentage required to pass. 60 per cent is not a high bar to meet, yet even two stewards (including former): Ajraddatz and Superpes15, only passed with 70.74 per cent and 68.80 per cent respectively (as of 1 July 2025, Ajraddatz is the only candidate who has passed with over 70 per cent and not renewing their term). Steward elections, on the other hand, require a minimum of 80 per cent to pass and is equally as much of a high steak role as U4C. The difference between the two is that steward elections use open voting while U4C elections use SecurePoll. If more qualified candidates are needed, stepping on the same rake is not the solution.

The other prime issue with SecurePoll is it merely gives numbers. Numbers, however, don't paint the full picture. They simply tell you how many candidates supported, opposed and how many didn't have an opinion – which leads to candidates running again, and again, and again...until the cycle gets to a point. It's still too early to definitively say how much longer this will sustain. But closed voting will never give candidates meaningful feedback on how to improve. The result of SecurePoll is that we see a recurring cycle where candidates re-run for U4C multiple times with no understanding of why they failed previously, eventually leading to community frustration and attrition – something that is a lot less commonly seen with steward elections. The feedback vacuum also creates an impression of arbitrary metric on what will land a success or failure – which only further discourages potential nominees from putting themselves forward. The only argument for supporting SecurePoll elections for U4C – that there will be increased participation – is far weaker of an argument in comparison to the downsides of SecurePoll.