[GRASS-PSC] Notes on the GRASS PSC election 2026

[Hernán De Angelis]

Dear PSC members, old & new

Elections are now finished. I already posted the results. Here come some 
notes I believe are important to remember about this election.

Best

Hernán



Communication

In this election, communication with the community was primarily done 
through Discourse because we do not have general mailing lists anymore 
(only one for the PSC). I get the impression that not many people read 
these forums, as measured by the read count (however reliable this might 
be) and the responses that these messages and announcements triggered.

I sent reminders of important actions as direct e-mails to eligible 
voters. This was much more effective than posting in the forums, as 
measured by the number of responses (nominations, votes, replies). 
Another benefit was the detection of invalid addresses and direct 
feedback from people who do not wish to participate. This is important 
because the voting process relies on e-mail and from previous experience 
I know that some people may get surprised by an invitation to vote. By 
removing these addresses early-on we focused our efforts to the group 
currently interested in the project.

I suggest that in the next election, posting in the forums is 
complemented with direct e-mails to call the attention of the community 
to events that require action, like nominating and voting.

The announcement of the start of election was also published in GitHub 
Discussions as "Announcement" with the aim of increasing visibility 
among active contributors. It is difficult to assess how effective this 
was in terms of catalyzing participation. However, it is a simple action 
with little cost, so I suggest we also do this in the next election.



List of voters

We started with a raw list of 271 eligible voters. After completing some 
entries, removing incomplete ones, invalid addresses, and people who 
expressed the wish not to participate anymore, we were left with a 
curated list of 206 eligible voters to start with. As a result of this 
and similar filtering in previous elections, I have a list of names and 
addresses to remove or change from any new preliminary list of voters in 
the next election.

It has been suggested to limit voter eligibility to people who have 
contributed within a given time frame before the election. This may be a 
question the PSC may want to discuss.



Election statistics

A total of 79 out of the 206 eligible voters participated in the 
election, a participation of 38%. Of these, 58 were complete responses 
(voters chose 5 candidates out of 8), 1 was a partial response (voter 
gave 2 definite votes for 2 different candidates), and 20 were null 
votes (voters chose 0 candidates out of 8). Considering only the 58 
complete votes, the participation was 28%. The remaining 127 eligible 
voters did not to participate (62%).

We had a higher number of registered voters than in 2024 (206 vs 146), 
practically the same vote count (58 vs 59 complete votes, 79 vs 82 for 
all votes), but a lower participation (28% vs 40% for complete votes, 
38% vs 56% for all votes) and a much higher number of non-participants 
(127 vs 64, or 62% vs 44%). In both this election and the previous one, 
the total number of registered voters, the vote count, and participation 
were all lower than in 2020. See table.

Election | Registered voters | Voted (complete) | Participation 
(complete) | Voted (null, incomplete) | Participation (null, incomplete) 
| Voted (total)    Participation (total) | Did not vote | Rate
2026 | 206 | 58 | 28 % | 21 | 10 % |  79 | 38 % | 127 | 62 %
2024 | 146 | 59 | 40 % | 23 | 16 % |  82 | 56 % |  64 | 44 %
2020 | 245 | 98 | 40 % | 67 | 27 % | 165 | 67 % |  80 | 33 %




Null and incomplete votes

As in previous elections, we had once more a number of null and 
incomplete votes and again I do not understand why. We have also 
discussed this before.

The survey was explicitly set to enable both a minimum and a maximum of 
5 responses, meaning that a voter had to select exactly 5 out of 8 
candidates. One possible explanation for the null votes is that the 
system possibly does not let voters to open the link more than once. If 
a voter opened the link, had a quick look, and then closed the page 
without sending the vote, then it may register as null. In order to 
reduce the impact of this potential issue I added a note in the e-mail 
templates encouraging them to open the link only once when they vote.

On the other hand, I do not have an explanation for how a person could 
submit an incomplete vote for only two candidates when the system had an 
explicit minimum of 5.

Everything seemed normal and uncomplicated when I voted. Did any of you 
experience problems? In that case I am happy to hear your perspective.



Closing comments

Apart from the minor problem of null and incomplete votes, I believe we 
had a fairly smooth process this time, from the initial production of a 
list of voters to the announcement of the results. Thanks to Vero and 
the PSC members that contributed in various stages.

Once more, I had a fun time contributing to the GRASS project as CRO. 
Thanks to the PSC and the community for the trust you put on me.


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