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

Linda Karlovská linda.karlovska at seznam.cz
Mon Nov 9 05:16:57 PST 2026 



Hello Hernán, thanks for the organization! 




I actually got only one email from you - the one without the link to the 
voting. I checked my spam folder and found that the first email with the 
link had dropped there. 




Seems like technology always fails in one way or another, one always has to 
be on guard :-)




Linda










---------- Původní e‑mail ----------
Od: Helmut Kudrnovsky via grass-psc <grass-psc at lists.osgeo.org>
Komu: GRASS-PSC <grass-psc at lists.osgeo.org>, Hernán De Angelis <
variablestarlight at gmail.com>
Datum: 9. 11. 2026 13:32:11
Předmět: Re: [GRASS-PSC] Notes on the GRASS PSC election 2026
"Thanks for the results, German!

Though I can't remember that I've got an email link for the voting system 
itself.

I'm travelling at the moment, so I could missed something...

Kind regards 
Helmut 


.... . .__.. .__.. ..
helmut kudrnovsky




Am 09.11.26, 12:13 schrieb "Hernán De Angelis via grass-psc" <grass-psc@
lists.osgeo.org(http://lists.osgeo.org)>:" 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.



_______________________________________________ grass-psc mailing list grass
-psc at lists.osgeo.org(http://lists.osgeo.org) https://lists.osgeo.org/
mailman/listinfo/grass-psc
(https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-psc)"

_______________________________________________ 
grass-psc mailing list 
grass-psc at lists.osgeo.org 
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-psc 
"
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-psc/attachments/20261109/55e54017/attachment.htm>

More information about the grass-psc mailing list