2026 GC Election Tracker / Checklist

[svrnm]

Tracking issue for planning and executing the 2026 OpenTelemetry Governance Committee election. Per the governance charter, 2026 is an even year, so 4 seats are up for election (staggered 2-year terms). The seats "until October 2026" currently belong to:

• @alolita
• @mtwo
• @mx-psi
• @trask

All eligible to run again.

Pre-election setup

• Determine 2026 election dates (nomination deadline, voting window, results date)
• Confirm election platform (Helios Voting, unless otherwise decided)
• Create new election in Helios Voting
• Update open-telemetry/otel-elections team membership to reflect this cycle's election committee
• Create elections/2026/ directory in community repo:
  • governance-committee-election.md (adapted from 2025, updated seats/dates/vacancies/committee)
  • governance-committee-candidates.md (empty candidates template)
• Create Google Form for voter registration exemptions
• Create GC Election Tracker / Announcements issue (labeled area/gc-election)
• Publish blog post announcing the election + call for nominations

Nomination phase

• Collect nominations via PRs to governance-committee-candidates.md
• Ratify nominees via PR comments; merge once confirmed
• Announce finalized nominee list (GitHub, mailing list, Slack)

Voter roll & voting

• Run scripts/gc-elections/generate-voters-roll.py to build voters-roll.csv
• Run scripts/gc-elections/create-github-comments.sh to tag eligible voters
• Run scripts/gc-elections/convert-voter-roll-to-helios.py, then update voter rolls in Helios
• Update Helios election with finalized candidate list
• Send 1st/2nd/3rd reminder emails to eligible voters via cncf-opentelemetry-governance@lists.cncf.io
• Open voting window; monitor for issues

Post-election

• Tabulate results (handle eligibility tie-breaks per charter, e.g. same-company limits)
• Announce results (blog post, link in tracker issue)
• Offboard departing GC members / onboard new members (GC Member Onboarding issue template, update community-members.md + CODEOWNERS, revoke system access, invite departing members to #opentelemetry-gc-alum)

[maryliag]

Form for exemptions created: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe5j6UtC0hPURP8uS-b-JgqSv7jXwZ88tMRDwSBMaTBMCdqng/viewform?usp=publish-editor