This is the first year[1] you can vote for more than 5 candidates. That doesn’t mean more than 5 candidates will be elected, but it does mean you can express backup preferences. (However, don’t vote for everyone – that has basically the same effect as not voting at all. Tim Peters can explain this in greater detail. )
Here’s who I’ve voted for:
All four incumbents, because they’ve done great work and continuity is important.
Of the new crop, I endorse Mariatta, Christian and Pablo. I’ve personally worked extensively with all of them and I’m sure all of them will make great SC members.
[1] UPDATE: Actually it’s not, see discussion below.
An “honest” voter approves of all and only the candidates they’d be fine with seeing on the SC. “None” and “all” are certainly possiblities! Either of those extremes will have the same effect on who’s elected (none!), just as if you hadn’t voted.
But they will keep your “active voter” status “yup, active”, and can have second-order effects in that total number of approvals reflect on how happy the community is with the candidates as a whole.
“Tactical” voters disguise their true opinions in order to try to influence the outcome. There’s not much room for that in this kind of election. In, e.g., pick-one plurality elections, it’s common as mud to vote for the lesser-of-two-evils major-party candidate rather than “waste” your vote on a 3rd-party predestined loser you really want. That’s tactical - not honest - voting. The system all but forces people into it.
But since we removed the limit on the number of approvals you can give, there’s never a good reason (neither real nor imagined) not to approve of everyone you really do approve of. You can try to game the system anyway, but you’re almost certain to fail .
That said, this form of multi-winner voting scheme is still vulnerable to “tyranny of the majority” and even “tryanny of a plurality” skewed outcomes, reflecting most-popular opinion in all those elected rather than reflecting the diversity of opinions in more-or-less matching proportions of winners different groups favor. More on that starting at the link below. Note I don’t claim that the alternatives mentioned are necessarily better or worse.
I know the PEP was changed then, but somehow I thought I had heard that there was a mistake in how the vote was set up that year and we still only could vote for 5 candidates. I honestly don’t remember either way, so you may be right, but I do remember someone telling me that more recently (like during the most recent discussion about voting). I also remember checking when the PEP change landed when I heard that. Tim may remember the message I am talking about.
)
.