Criteria

Voting

Jury Vote

The Jury vote consists of two rounds. In the first, each juror reviews all the proposals and is assigned a particular group to read in depth. The juror is asked to present this group to the rest of the jury and argue for or against particular proposals. Rhizome staff on the jury will review all proposals. At the end of the first round, the jurors will cast a vote on all the proposals. The top twenty-five will progress to the second round, in which the jurors will discuss the group and cast a final vote that will determine five of the winning projects.

Please note that we reserve the right to change the process at any point if we feel changes are necessary to ensure the privacy, fairness, and feasibility of the process.

Member vote

Each year, Rhizome members play a critical role in the Commissions process. Their membership makes them eligible to review and cast their vote on proposals from a diverse group of artists. The comment fields below each proposal allow for ample discussion and dialogue about the work.

Rhizome members are allowed to cast one vote per cycle, regardless of how many valid memberships they may have. We reserve the right to eliminate votes if we have reason to believe that they come from a member who is voting with more than one membership. Members who have submitted proposals are welcome to vote.

1. Approval Stage

Rhizome members choose finalists from the initial pool of applicants. They may vote Yes or No for as many or as few proposals as they wish, and can change their votes at any time throughout the duration of the initial stage. While members may vote for whatever proposal they choose, the interface will encourage them to review proposals with the least number of votes, to even the number of votes received by proposals.

No member will be required to review all the proposals. However, the more proposals you vote for, the more influence you will have over which proposals proceed to the final stage.

At the end of the approval stage, proposals will be ranked by the percentage of Yes votes received. For example, a proposal with ten Yes votes will have a score of 100%, while a proposal with fifteen Yes votes and five No votes will have a score of 75%. The highest-scoring twenty-five proposals will move on to the ranking stage; this may be more than twenty-five in the event of ties.

After the end of this stage, Rhizome may review the proposals to ensure compliance with the requirements of the Call For Proposals.

2. Ranking Stage

In the ranking stage, Rhizome members choose two Rhizome Commissions recipients from the pool of twenty-five or more finalists.

The results are determined by single transferable vote, also known as instant runoff voting. Each voter ranks the proposals from most favorite to least favorite. If a proposal has more than 50% of first-place votes after the initial tally, it becomes the winner. If not, the lowest-ranking proposal is removed from the list, and the votes are automatically tallied again.

For example: Five voters have to choose one winning proposal from candidates a, b, c, and d. They vote as follows:

Maximilian	abc
Lukas	acb
Niklas	bca
Jurgen	bac
Hans	cab

When the voting is complete, a has 2 votes, b has 2, and c has 1. Nobody has a majority, so we remove the least popular candidate, c, making Hans' vote effectively "ab". Now a gets 3 votes and b gets 2. The winner is a.

Voters are not required to rank all finalists, but they are encouraged to rank as many as possible. If you rank only a few candidates, your vote may be eliminated entirely in the final tally.

For more information on this voting method, refer to the Wikipedia entry on Instant-runoff voting