Fellowship elections participation

[Florian Snow]

Hi Erik,

Thank you for trying to find the reasons for the low turnout.  I already
responded on fsfe-de, but I would like to sum up my thoughts here for
everyone who does not speak German.

I think it is unclear what the GA does and this makes it hard for people
to make a decision.  Even among us candidates, I think it is unclear
what the GA does.   The statements about what each of us wants to do as
part of the GA are so different, not just a different direction or
approach, they feel like they are about completely different tasks.  I
take this as another hint of the role of a Fellowship Representative and
the GA in general being unclear.

I also think many voters don't know us candiates.  Now there have been
many steps to introduce us, but looking at all the 7s in the votes, I
get the impression that many people knew one or two of the candidates
and put everyone else on rank 7.  That is a good choice if you want to
make sure that the candidates you know are ranked higher overall and
that is the approach I would take.  However, I think if more of the
candiates were known to the voters, the votes would use more of the
ranks.  This does not mean I think voting the way people have is a
problem, but I think it shows us that we should do more to show people
who the candidates are and what they stand for.

All in all, I think these two issues lead to voter turnout being left to
chance.  If the vote doesn't seem very important or it takes a
significant amount of time to find out more about the candidates, then
people will push off the vote and in the end, they may simply forget.  I
almost forgot multiple times in the past and I hardly ever knew who to
vote for.

Happy hacking!
Florian