It is election season yet again for the FOSS United Community. For the second year, 3 members of the inaugural Governing Board (GB) are stepping down. That means we are electing three new GB members from the Community!
What’s new this year:
- Two-year terms for GB members. With an option to step down after one year.
- The nomination process takes place on the forum. Community members can submit nominations using the template and make a post on the forum.
- Goodbye custom voting platform. Hello to a commercial offering. Following feedback from last year, we’ve decided to go ahead with a popular voting platform to conduct this season of Elections. More details on that soon.
(For more context on the Why Governing Board, check out the explainer from last season here, and if time permits, read notes from previous GB meetings to gain context and perspective)
Timelines:
| Phase |
Dates |
| Nominations open |
August 10 - Sept 5 |
| GB reviews & finalises candidates |
Sept 6 - Sept 8 |
| Promotions and Campaign period |
Sept 9 - Sept 23 |
| Voting |
Sept 24 - Sept 27, 3 PM |
| Result. Say hello to the new GB |
Sep 27, 5 PM |
How to nominate yourself?
Create a new post using the Nomination Template, under Category: 2026 GB Elections and Topic: Nominations, with the post title “ Nomination | Your Name - 2026 GB Elections ”.
Tell the community who you are, your stake in the wider digital commons community and FOSS United, and why you are running for the GB.
Please note that after you submit your nomination, the Governing Board will filter the nominations and determine the final ballot. Submitting a nomination does not mean that you automatically qualify for the ballot.
If elected, Governing Board members are expected to
- Proactively respond to async communication via email and/or IM
- Dedicate at least 10 hours per month to Governing Board duties, which includes a 2-hour monthly gathering of the Governing Board, participating in open community calls, and additional volunteering duties with the Staff/Community
- Volunteer/get involved in at least one of FOSS United programs/projects/initiatives
- Shape FOSS United annual budgeting and fundraising
- Read notes from previous GB meetings to gain context and perspective.
Coming up next week
- FOSS United Governing Board: FAQs
- Guidelines on Voter Eligibility
- Reflections on one year of the GB
If you have any questions, please drop a comment here or write to governing-board@fossunited.org.
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Bump - 4 days more for nominations to end.
Update: Nominations phase for the 2026 GB elections has closed. We’ve received about 10 nominations for the 3 open GB seats.
The nominations are (in alphabetical order)
The campaigning period starts from tomorrow. Stay tuned for more details.
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can you tag folks in this post ? That will trigger emails, if they have them enabled
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Happening today!
Virtual Open House | Meet the GB candidates!
Sept 15, 07:00 PM IST
Link to RSVP: Open House | Governing Board Elections 2026
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Small note on Who can vote and how the voting happens?
Last year, every account on the platform received a ballot. But over the last few years, we’ve seen an uptick in spam and bot accounts on the platform. To address this, this year we’ve tightened the voter roll. You’re eligible to vote if you’ve bought a ticket to a FOSS United event or RSVP’d for one in the past.
The final voter roll will be locked on the evening of September 23, and ballots go out the morning of September 24.
This year, we are using BetterVoting’s platform to conduct the elections.
- The Python community recently used it to organise their elections.
- We are in touch with the BetterVoting platform team, and they helped us figure out a bunch of things.
We intend to follow STAR voting (bloc) methodology. As opposed to ranked-choice voting. This is a change from what we had discussed earlier.
- It is a simpler-to-understand method for voters
- It makes the process much more expressive for voters.
- Difference between Ranked-Choice and Star voting on the face of it:
- RCV asks: “Put these movies in order from best to worst.”
- STAR asks: “Rate each movie out of 5 stars.”
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The 2026 FOSS United Governing Board Elections concluded on September 27th and were announced at IndiaFOSS. The three new GB members elected from the community are
You can check out the full results here: 2026 FOSS United Governing Board Elections
We’d like to thank all the candidates for putting their name down in the elections. You made it possible for the community to have a rich, healthy and meaningful election. We look forward to working with all of you through the coming years.
More details to follow soon.
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A few things worth noting from the election ( 2026 FOSS United Governing Board Elections ). Note that 985 voters are listed in the election
- 39% of voters supported @Mohit_P_Tahiliani and @Ashutosh_Pandey equally. Similarly, 42% of voters supported @Ashutosh_Pandey and @R_R equally, and 51% supported @R_R and @Balu_B equally
- All of the winners have significant support behind them (>70%) in the runoff rounds
- 440 voters gave their maximum support to @Mohit_P_Tahiliani , 339 to @Ashutosh_Pandey , and 293 to @R_R
- Interestingly, 15% of @Mohit_P_Tahiliani s voters (who gave maximum support) didn’t vote for any other candidate on the ballot, i.e., they gave 5 stars to @Mohit_P_Tahiliani and left everyone else on the ballot blank. Similarly, 14% of @Ashutosh_Pandey s voters didn’t vote for any other candidate on the ballot. Contrast this with only 3% of @R_R s voters didn’t vote for any other candidate on the ballot and 4% for @Balu_B (runner-up). See info under “Stats for Nerds” > “Average Supporter Profile”
- @Balu_B , @Suslime , and @vysakh_premkumar are first, second, and third runner-ups in the election
In addition, we’re trying to get info on the voters - to cross check how many of the voters were also at indiafoss (ticket holders) vs how many people not at indiafoss voted. This will help us plan a larger voter turnout for next year
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You might have noticed that 985 voters are listed on the election page - but on the admin dashboard, we see 1131 people are listed as having voted in the election. We heard back from the bettervoting team that this difference is because of how they count abstentions!
A ballot is counted as an abstention if the voter gave equal stars to everyone on the ballot, e.g., the voter gave 5 stars to all candidates.
146 ballots were counted as abstentions, which, when added to 985 shown on the public election page brings us to the 1131 number that we see on the internal dashboard. It is highly unfortunate that more than 100 voters voted in such a manner, and it’s something that we should address next year.
| Abstention |
Count |
| All 5s abstention |
94 |
| All 4s abstention |
15 |
| All 3s abstention |
6 |
| All 2s abstention |
1 |
| All 1s abstention |
0 |
| All 0s abstention |
30 |
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Things you learn about human behavior 
My speculations: The all 5 starers are likely just too kind, and the all 2s is a likely troll. All 0s is a pure miss on understanding of the system (or could be the UI was not clear, etc.).
But ~ 12% of the voters of all votes as abstentions is a large number still considering factors like voter demographics.
In any case, the system bettervoting designed did its job! weeding out the noise. 10/10 recommend.
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Could be NOTA right ? (None Of The Above)
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