None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
10:00 Fri, 20 Mar 2026
In any vote in the world of Debianism, voters have the option to reject all candidates and vote None of the Above (NotA).
In an earlier report, I speculated there is silent pressure on Sruthi Chandran to temporarily withdraw her nomination so the shadow candidate Héctor Orón Martínez can submit a nomination and compete against Sruthi.
Now Thomas Goirand (zigo) has dared to say the same thing out loud on the mailing list:
Subject: Re: lack of candidates 2026 leader election Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2026 09:41:42 +0100 From: Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org> Organization: Debian To: debian-vote@lists.debian.org
On 3/18/26 10:24 PM, Eric Dorland wrote: > * Devan Mardyks (dmardyks@gmail.com) wrote: >> I'm concerned by the lack of candidates in the 2026 leader elections and >> disagree with denying potential candidates based on constitutional >> deadlines. Given the circumstances of a single candidate being guaranteed >> the position and the voting process now being pointless, exceptions should >> be made to restore a semblance of democratic values to the process. > > The voting process is not pointless, since there is a "None of the > above" option on the ballot. If enough developers vote NotA then the > election process is restarted. Have a look at > https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-5 for the details.
I also would prefer if there was more than one candidate, but perhaps changing the rules during the election isn't what we want.
There's in fact 2 ways this could happen.
1/ Sruthi (temporarily) withdraw her nomination, just in order to restart the nomination period. Is this really possible?
2/ Sruthi refuses to do 1/, and A majority vote NotA.
Cheers,
Thomas Goirand (zigo)
On debian-vote, the thread about Sruthi Chandran, who is somebody's wife, being less than a full candidate is bigger than all the other threads combined:
The origin of this problem is the decision to allow wives and girlfriends to call themselves Debian Developers or "Project Members", which is an even more dodgy term, in the first place.
As explained elsewhere, Debian is a work of joint authorship under copyright law.
The copyright law is a set of rules over and above the Debian constitution. In many ways, the Debian constitution is an act of bad faith because it attempts to distract people from our real status and rights as joint authors.
Some people do a lot of administrative work, for example, nitpicking how we write on mailing lists or managing conference attendance. Those tasks take time but they are not acts of authorship. In the world of book publishing, you simply pay the printing company to print your book. You don't ask the printers to work for free in exchange for putting their name in the book as a co-author.
Everybody knows that if one of these groupies is elected, they will always have to defer to their husband or boyfriend for help with technical subjects. Sruthi Chandran's husband will be helping her run Debian through pillow talk. Everybody knows that is not real diversity. Telling the community that Sruthi Chandran is the leader or telling the community that Debian is being run by a woman would be a lie, an act of bad faith.
Therefore, as it stands, this is not a choice between Sruthi Chandran vs None of the Above (NotA).
People are voting on the choice between Deceive the world about diversity vs None of the Above (NotA).
Throughout the election, I plan to publish more reports revealing the awkward truth about how Debian pretends to care about diversity.
If we do care about diversity, one thing we could do is take away all the titles we gave to people's wives and simply pay those women for the time they spend doing administrative chores.
Remember, Debianists gave over $120,000 in kill money to racist Swiss lawyerists to attack my family but they didn't pay Abraham Raji anything for the work he did helping organise DebConf23. When Raji joined the other developers on the day trip, they asked him to contribute some of his own money, he was left behind to swim alone and he drowned. Yet the lawyerists were given $120,000.
The best way to encourage people to nominate for the election will be for the existing leader, Andreas Tille, to withdraw all the privacy attacks, settle the lawsuits proactively and ensure the next leader can walk in and find the desk is clean ready to work on productive things.
Don't hold your breath waiting for transparency about these attacks on my family. There is still time to watch my video and contribute to the crowdfunding campaign. █