Overview
Intersect Governance is a documentation section that explains how the Constitutional Committee is elected, the group that checks whether governance decisions follow the network's written constitution. You can follow an election end to end: who may stand, what candidates must disclose, how representatives vote, and how the count gets checked. Intersect facilitates the process, so the rules and the outcomes are published side by side.
Cardano's on-chain governance splits authority between DReps, the delegated representatives who vote on behalf of the ADA holders that assign them their voting power, stake pool operators, and the Constitutional Committee. Intersect Governance covers how that third group is chosen, and it sits in the Intersect Knowledge Base under Cardano Facilitation Services, alongside pages on budget administration and protocol upgrades.
Key Features
- See exactly what it takes to stand for a seat. In the 2026 election, candidates register as an individual, an organization, or a consortium acting as one, and each supplies an on-chain credential that Intersect verifies before approval1. The stated reason is to avoid electing anyone who then cannot take up the job2.
- Follow a vote step by step. The DRep guides cover connecting a supported browser wallet or a command-line signer, explain that signing with those tools proves who you are without creating a transaction or a fee, and mark where choosing candidates ends and submitting begins3.
- Understand why the committee's size matters. The protocol needs a minimum number of active members, set by the committeeMinSize parameter, to validate governance decisions, and dropping below that number pauses governance until a replacement is elected and the resulting governance action is ratified on-chain4.
- Know that the vote alone seats nobody. An election decides which names go into an on-chain governance action, and DReps and stake pool operators have to ratify it before anyone takes office2.
- Check a result yourself. The 2026 outcome is published with an independent audit that rebuilds the count from the finalized voting records and a snapshot of each voter's weight, checks file integrity with cryptographic hashes, and validates the transactions committing the result on-chain5.
What to Expect
The documentation is organized in child pages, and Intersect Governance keeps each election on its own record instead of overwriting the last. The 2026 election filled four seats whose terms were expiring6,5. The 2025 snap election filled a single seat after a sitting member retired and left the committee short of the minimum4. An earlier 2025 election filled all seven seats at once, with terms staggered for continuity7.
The participation guidelines list the questions an applicant answers, covering their contributions to Cardano and how they read the constitution, and mark the point where a profile locks1. An optional exercise on Cardano's governance test network lets an applicant practice generating and using the credentials the job needs8.
If you are a DRep, the voting guides are the practical part. One names the supported browser and hardware wallets for the earlier 2025 election, and the hardware brand that will not work for DRep registration9. Voting in the 2026 election ran on the Intersect Hydra-Voting Tool, built by Intersect member Ekklesia6.
Rules differ between elections in ways that change what a voter does. In the earlier 2025 election a submitted vote was final9; in the snap election a DRep could change a vote while the ballot stayed open3. Read the guide for the election you are looking at.
