Hello everyone,

after the nomination period has been over and preparations have been done, 
voting has opened for the Gentoo Council 2013/2014 election. The full list of 
candidates and their manifestos can be found at:

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/elections/council/2013/council-201306-
nominees.xml

Further instructions for voting can be found in your home directory on 
woodpecker (aka dev.gentoo.org), and in the motd.

The rules for the Council election as well as details on how to vote for this 
election are available in the Council Elections Archives[1]. In any case, here 
is the quick procedure on how to vote using votify:

  * If you're eligible to vote in this election, log in to dev.gentoo.org
  * Type votify --new council-201306 to create a new ballot file
  * Edit .ballot-council-201306 file in your home directory and rank the 
candidates
  * Once you're finished, use votify --verify council-201306 command to verify 
the validity of your ballot file
  * If everything is okay, use votify --submit council-201306 to submit your 
vote. Don't forget your vote doesn't count until you submit it.
  * If you run into problems, you can either work them out yourself using 
votify --help or contact election officials and ask them for help.

The elections for the Council include the pseudo _reopen_nominations 
candidate. If the pseudo-candidate '_reopen_nominations' appears in 7th place 
or higher those candidates that rank above '_reopen_nominations' will be the 
current council. A second period of election will be opened for the remaining 
council seats. No third period of election will be opened in the event 
'_repoen_nominations' ranks higher than the candidates necessary to fill the 
council[2]. In case there's a need to fill a seat during the council term due 
to a retirement, a new election must be held to fill that seat.

The results will be announced once the election officials have ratified the 
results.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact (elections at gentoo dot org), 
or #gentoo-elections on Freenode.
 
Happy voting!

 [1] - http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/elections/council/
 [2] -
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/meeting-logs/20090212-summary.txt

For the elections officials,
Theo