“Everyone” was an exaggeration. I know there are more than 7 people in the community and committee, and I haven’t cast my vote yet.
It was more meant that even those not on the current committee have voted, and with this type of poll there is no way to remove your vote (from what I recall).
I think it did actually! Oh well 
I’m blaming it on the fact that the words “committee” and “community” are so similar…
What bold text?! 
Poll’s closed, see discussion below.
This was raised in discussion, however:
I wish we had a voting tool that would let us split the results between active committee members and the community, because we need a smaller group to make and execute decisions, but it’s still useful feedback to know if those decisions are aligned with the community. We’ll have to build this separately, and for now we can count votes manually when the poll closes 
I do see your point, though that leaves me wondering why have elections at all. I’d be happier to step down from nomination than to change the process midstream.
As far as an existing process, or a concrete and definitive agreement to have 9 spots on the committee there really wasn’t one at any point. Keep in mind this is the first time ClassicPress has chosen a new committee. From the October meeting transcript:
So we planned for the possibility of having more nominations than spots. If we had (for example) 12 nominations and a tentative agreement to have 9 spots, then we’d still need to have elections and I wouldn’t have made this post.
I’ve also been thinking that it’s a good idea to reduce the number of committee members down from our initial 12, as that has seemed a bit unmanageable over the past year. I am fine with a small reduction down to 10, and we can change this again in a year if it doesn’t end up working out well.
…or, would it be bumped to 12 to avoid excluding the other 3? As a first vote, it does set some precedent.
This is my concern, and why I have held off casting my own vote on the above poll because I haven’t really been convinced either way.
If this year we bump it 10, even though I think most of the community thought it was 9 (I may be wrong, but that was my understanding, and it is in the blog posts we have posted). We set a precedent of, well if it is close we will just bump the # to make sure we don’t upset anyone.
Plus, honestly, not holding an election to test our theory of “being democratic is the right approach” seems counter intuitive to the whole thing we are trying to achieve.
Edit: don’t mind all the edits, I am just fighting with Discourse regarding the quoted text from the above post.
I personally don’t think this does have to set a precedent because it is, after all, a learning experience and rules can be put in place for next year to govern what happens in cases such as this.
This election is basically a trial and, as @james says, the number 9 was also quite arbitrary and was to be reviewed after nominations were submitted - and that’s exactly what’s happening now.
What if only 8 had applied? We’d probably still be in a similar position except in that case, the committee would be discussing whether to drop the number down from 9 to 8.
Just my tuppence worth fwiw.
Even vote can occur anytime, no matter how many committee members we have. A solution in this case may be to address the decision to the community, level 2 or level 3.
Just a note: this is an issue that potentially gives the committee members almost unlimited terms of being in charge. Technically, they can simply increase the committee size each time they face the lack of vacancies. And since they are the only voters, they have the majority automatically.
I never mean it happens this time or with the current members)) Everything goes absolutely right in the current situation. Rejection of just a 1 person by a vote can look unfriendly, kinda ostracism So, adding vacancy is a good solution for now. Simple, positive and benefitial.
But I also see a future vulnerability here due to the small logical issue. The probable solution is to make such votes open for the whole community (level 2 or somehow else) to avoid the “loop of authority”.
And for sure this additional vacancy should not increase the normal size of the Committee for the next years. Otherwise we can face a recurring growth) Today it’s 9+1, next time it can appear 10+1, and next year 11+1. Logically there is no straight border. So it should be limited formally. 9+1 is affordable to avoid ostracism, but 9+1+1 should turn it back to just 9 vacancies and the normal voting process.
P.S. No, I’m not a great fan of the bureaucracy
I still don’t see what the problem is tbh. It was the committee itself that made the decision to reduce the number of members from 12 to 9, so surely that same committee can subsequently decide if 9 is still appropriate - especially as it was also agreed at the same time that 9 is non-binding. The committee could just have easily agreed that there should be 10 members, or 6, or to leave it at 12.
I believe the committee, as with all committees everywhere, has to have a fair degree of autonomy otherwise nothing will ever get done.
The community has been under the impression for weeks that there would be 9, an odd number that aims to prevent stalemates. Changing the terms midstream is what is problematic.
PS, I do agree about a level of autonomy.
The idea of preventing stalemates was certainly not the basis on which the committee agreed to adopt that number. It might have been the motivation for some people — I can’t say what people were thinking — but that was not the stated reason. That was simply that the current number of 12 had seemed too large to some, and so a smaller number was proposed. That’s all.
As has already been pointed out, having 9 on the committee doesn’t prevent stalemates anyway, because it’s unlikely that every member will attend every meeting, and someone might abstain anyway.
More importantly, if we end up with votes being decided by a margin of one, we have a bigger problem anyway. We should be looking for consensus, not small majorities. On that basis, the precise number of members is really irrelevant; it’s all about whether it works at the time.
And talk of precedent is certainly premature; we are still finding our way! We can think in terms of precedent when we have been around for a few years.
So I can’t think of any good reason for excluding one of the candidates now.
Apparently, I’ve been mistaken about the process.
From the blog post we have been sharing everywhere:
The new committee will have 9 members.
I think everyone in the community was working under this assumption.
Here is my suggestion, I think @LinasSimonis was suggesting something similar.
We scrap this poll above, and reopen a poll for all TL2+ users to vote on the number of committee members. If the community votes in favour of 10, we move forward with the current 10. If it votes in favour of 9, we hold the elections as we had planned.
Cuts the need to argue about the merits of having 10 vs 9.
Then going forward, we don’t wait until we get the nominations in to decide the number of committee members. We set the number ahead of time so everyone can work under 1 “truth”.
I closed this poll. Good luck.
If when you that link you can see the poll, that means you have a Trust Level of 2 or above and are welcome to vote.
