Introduction

On 2 September 2026, the new Wikimedia CEE Hub Steering Committee began its term, following several months of nominations, eligibility checks, community engagement and voting. Eight members were elected: four by individual community members and four by CEE affiliates, and two more were later co-opted.

But this election was also a first test of putting the CEE Hub’s governance model into practice. We had the rules; we still needed to build the process around them. That meant establishing an independent Electoral Commission, translating eligibility rules into practice, working with two different electorates, and building Fala, our own voting tool on Wikimedia Toolforge.

From rules to an election

The election had two constituencies: individual CEE community members and CEE affiliates, each electing four members. That made eligibility one of the first practical challenges. Community voters had to meet both Wikimedia activity requirements and demonstrate a connection to the CEE community, while affiliates had to designate representatives to vote on their behalf.

To oversee the process, an independent three-member Electoral Commission was established: Antanana as Chair, Bencemac and Gdarin. The Commission verified candidates and voter eligibility, interpreted the rules when unclear cases appeared, supervised the election, and ultimately certified the results. Hub staff supported the process and its technical implementation, but decisions about eligibility and the application of election rules remained with the Commission.

Thirteen candidates entered the nomination process, and after the eligibility review, twelve were confirmed for the final ballots: six Community candidates and six Affiliate candidates.

Building Fala

One of the biggest practical questions was how to run the vote itself. The election had two different electorates, different eligibility rules, preferential voting, and the possibility that one person could be eligible to vote in both categories.

Instead of adapting the election to the limits of an existing tool, we built Fala on Wikimedia Toolforge. Voters logged in with their Wikimedia accounts, eligibility could be checked through the system, and Community and Affiliate voting were handled separately. Voters could also return and update their ballot before the deadline.

Privacy was part of the design as well. Fala recorded who had voted and when a ballot was submitted or updated, but it did not keep the voter’s candidate selections or rankings linked to their identity.

Building Fala also strengthened the Hub’s ability to run its own governance processes independently. We were not limited to whatever an existing election platform happened to support; we could build the voting process around the rules and needs defined by the CEE Hub itself.

Voting and results

Voting was open from 6 to 20 July 2026. On each ballot, voters could rank as many or as few candidates as they wanted. The candidate ranked first received six points, the second five, and so on, while unranked candidates received no points.

Fifty-two community members voted in the Community election, while 15 CEE affiliates participated through their designated representatives. The Electoral Commission then certified the results, including the  rules used to decide the winner when two or more candidates received the same number of votes in the Affiliate election.

The elected members were Shahen Araboghlian, Magda Barascu, Wojciech Pędzich, Mārtiņš Bruņenieks, Gorana Gomirac, Toni Sant, Klára Joklová and Vera Pelhan. They later co-opted Iglika Ivanova and Armen Mirzoyan, completing the ten-member Steering Committee.

The first meeting of the new Steering Committee took place on 2 September 2026, which marked the official start of its term. That is also when they selected the Chair: Toni Sant and Co-Chair: Vera Pelhan.

What we learned

The clearest lesson was how difficult it can be to turn governance rules into something a voting system can actually verify. Some criteria, such as account age, edit count and block history, could be checked directly from Wikimedia data. Others could not. For example, eligibility through membership in approved CEE mailing lists could not be verified by existing voting tools such as SecurePoll. That problem led directly to Fala: voters log in with their Wikimedia account, verify their email with a one-time code, and the address is checked against a whitelist built from the approved mailing lists. In other words, the election rules themselves shaped the architecture of the tool.

A different lesson came from affiliate participation. Some eligible affiliates never nominated a representative and therefore never voted. That showed us that simply giving affiliates a formal role in governance is not enough; they also need to see the election as part of their own responsibility and engage with the process early enough. After the election, the Electoral Commission followed up directly with non-participating affiliates to understand why they had dropped out. For future elections, earlier contact, clearer expectations and more active follow-up with affiliates will probably matter as much as the voting system itself.

What comes next

The election also made us think more broadly about how the CEE Hub puts its governance into practice. If the Hub is going to make more of its own decisions through formal community processes, it needs infrastructure that can support them. In some cases, the available tools were designed for different purposes; in others, there was simply no dedicated tool for the kind of internal decision-making the Hub needed.

For that reason, we decided to build Iskara, a voting tool for internal CEE Hub decision-making. The aim is to give the Hub greater independence in implementing its governance and a practical way to run its own votes when they are needed. Fala was our first experience of building such infrastructure around a real governance process; Iskara takes that experience further and applies it to the Hub’s internal decision-making more generally.

To learn more about the Steering Committee and internal governance of Wikimedia CEE Hub, check out the dedicated Meta page.