The elections will be held between April 16 and April 23 via a Facebook application developed by Wildfire, while Ernst & Young will audit the results, Facebook Friday night on its official blog.

Facebook gave its 175 million-plus members 30 days to submit feedback regarding the governing concepts and policies the popular social-networking site plans to draft and adopt. That feedback period ended on March 29 and Facebook received comments from less than 4,000 members.

Facebook is engaged in this process after a change to its terms of use in February ignited a fierce controversy over concerns the company was claiming perpetual ownership of all content ever loaded to the site.

In response to the outcry, CEO Mark Zuckerberg rolled back the changes but announced that Facebook wanted to do away with its terms of use statement altogether and draft from scratch new documents for its governance that are simpler and clearer, taking into account members' feedback.

To that end, Facebook created two "town hall" sections on its site on Feb. 26 for members to leave ideas and opinions regarding, respectively, the site's -- its philosophy and values -- and the site's towards its users.