Elections

Election information

Each year, we hold elections for the board of directors for Altonimbus Entertainment (the organization that produces and runs the Kumoricon convention). Altonimbus Entertainment, and thereby Kumoricon, is governed by a board of directors consisting of nine members who each serve annual terms. Terms begin and end at the conclusion of voting for the annual meeting of the body which elects each board member.

Seven of the nine board members are elected by the membership (that is, the staff of Kumoricon) at the Annual Meeting of the Membership:

  • Chair/President
  • Director of Infrastructure
  • Director of Membership
  • Director of Operations
  • Director of Programming
  • Director of Publicity
  • Director of Relations
This election is a Special Election to fill the currently vacant position of Chair/President.

Election details:

  • Nominations, questions, comments, and responses will be held online on the public Discord leading up to the July 11, 2026, Special Meeting of the Membership.
  • At the July 11, 2026, Special Meeting of the Membership, live candidate speeches, questions, and comments will be held, including an anonymous question-and-comment session.
  • Actual voting will not occur at the membership meeting. Instead, voting will be open for five days, from Thursday, July 9, at 8:00pm, Pacific Time, to Tuesday, July 14, at 8:00pm, Pacific Time.
  • All members will receive emailed voting instructions closer to July 9.
  • Members do not need to attend the meeting to vote.
  • Those who are unable to attend the meeting may watch the video replay on Twitch, and there will be time to watch it before the voting deadline.
  • Because voting is not taking place specifically at a membership meeting, proxy voting is not allowed. All members have five days to vote, and those interested in voting should directly cast their vote.
  • In order to reduce the chances of needing a runoff vote, voting will be conducted using approval voting, as specified in section 4.D.4.c of the bylaws. In approval voting, members vote for as many candidates as the member approves of, with the winner being the candidate who receives the most votes, as long as it is a majority of votes cast. There will also be a "no confidence" option for all races.
  • We will continue our use of ElectionBuddy, a third-party platform, to vote in this election.
  • Votes on ElectionBuddy are anonymous. No Kumoricon staff, including the election tellers or moderators, can see who you voted for or whether you voted "no confidence". (We can, however, see which members submitted a ballot at all.)
  • The vote counts for each candidate will be publicly published.
  • We will continue to host nominations, online Q&A, comments, and endorsements on the public Discord.
  • We are no longer mirroring the nomination list, questions, and comments on the website forums.
  • We will continue to create an archive of questions, answers, and comments on the staff website for those who do not have a Discord account.
  • Full rules and details are in our elections process document (staff login required).

Election roles

The election is being run by the following staff:

Nomination moderator: Leon, Assistant Director, Infrastructure
Election moderator: Rebecca, Assistant Supervisor, Attendee Registration
Teller: Kris, Director of Relations
Teller: Ben, Executive Assistant, Operations
Teller: Rin, Manager, Risk Management
Backup teller: Stephen, Secretary

The nomination moderator will oversee nominations, and moderate the online questions and comments.

The election moderator will oversee elections at the election meeting.

The election moderator and tellers will receive and moderate anonymous questions and comments that are read at the meeting (see process below).

Nominations

Nominations must be seconded to be valid. A person cannot nominate or second themselves. To be listed on the candidate list below and on the ballot, a candidate must be nominated and seconded, and then accept the nomination, by the deadline. Once a candidate is nominated and seconded, they may change their acceptance status at will until the nominations deadline of Monday, July 6, 2026, 11:59pm.

Nominations and seconds can be made, and candidates may respond to nominations, in two ways:

Candidates are listed alphabetically by last name, using the preferred name as set in their official staff registration, which candidates may update at any time, or, alternately, the preferred name as requested to the nomination moderator.

Chair

  • Steven (accepted)
  • Elaina (nominated and seconded, but not accepted)
  • Stacie (nominated and seconded, but not accepted)
  • Kirk (nominated, needs second)

Nomination records

The following is a record of the nominations, seconds, and acceptance decisions for this election:

June 28, 2026, at 4:31pm: Steven was nominated for Chair by Rebecca Wishon.
June 28, 2026, at 4:41pm: Steven was seconded for Chair by Rin (feathers) Yang.
June 28, 2026, at 4:42pm: Steven accepted their nomination for Chair.
June 28, 2026, at 5:24pm: Elaina was nominated for Chair by Joseph Mason.
June 28, 2026, at 9:57pm: Elaina was seconded for Chair by Jessica Robbins.
June 29, 2026, at 7:27pm: Elaina declined their nomination for Chair
June 29, 2026, at 7:57pm: Kirk was nominated for Chair by Joelliuz (JoeJoe) Andino.
June 29, 2026, at 8:12pm: Kirk declined their nomination for Chair.
June 29, 2026, at 8:48pm: Stacie was nominated for Chair by Kirk Stewart.
June 29, 2026, at 8:53pm: Stacie was seconded for Chair by by Joelliuz (JoeJoe) Andino.
July 2, 2026, at 9:58pm: Stacie declined their nomination for Chair

Questions and comments

The primary venue for online questions and comments will be the channels for each position on the official Kumoricon Discord public server. Please ask your question or make your comment in the appropriate channel for that position, rather than the #nominations channel.

Shortly before the meeting, we will create an exported version of the questions and answers for staff who don't have a Discord account. We will also continue to hold question-and-comment sessions at the membership meeting.

Anonymous questions and comments

After the open question-and-comment period for each candidate, we will host an additional anonymous question-and-comment period. Questions and comments may be emailed in advance, or during the meeting, to election.support@kumoricon.org.

This process is subject to the following rules:

  • The members of the moderator panel (composed of the election moderator(s) and tellers) choose anonymous questions and comments to sponsor and read at the meeting, from those submitted.
  • Anonymous questions/comments are anonymous when read at the meeting, but the moderator panel must know the identity of the person commenting. Your message must be signed with a name that clearly identifies you within the Kumoricon community.
  • As part of the moderation process, the panel may request more information from you or request a change to your question/comment, or possibly even reject your question/comment.
  • The moderator panel will reply to you stating whether your comment has been accepted.
  • Questions/comments may be shortened or summarized, and similar questions/comments from multiple people may be combined.

A more detailed explanation of the rules and process around anonymous questions and comments is available in our elections process (staff login required).