If I need to vote I need to know whom I think are better fit. But since they could only be non-core committers and then coming from other more specific community(I mean each has their own background), it’s possible I don’t know any of them. Or I just know some of them and then only vote for people I know of. Or I just trust who nominate them. I am afraid at some time, we could just vote according to arbitrary reasons, for example, vote for people coming from Asia, just like what @pitrou has said about his PSF voting experience. I know there will be self-introduction but I don’t think that really helps.
I don’t see any fundamental difference here with voting for core committers. Particularly if becoming a core committer is a “path to fame” (as some people seem to think), you’re going to end up having to choose between people you also don’t really know. At least this approach requires the self-introduction and some period of question and answer before election, and there’s motivation to self-promote if there is a perception that people won’t vote for someone they don’t know.
Promoting a contributor as core dev is a slow process because it requires to build trust. That’s partially why it can take 6 months to 5 years to become a core dev.
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And yet we still often promote core devs that many of us have never heard of, despite (allegedly) six to twenty-four months worth of participation. Which means not everyone has an opinion on who they’re voting for, but are essentially delegating their vote to someone they do know and trust.
The point here is not about promoting core developers, but about the fact that we already vote for people we don’t know and rely on each other to make good nominations, so there’s no reason to oppose the same process for other votes and also a much higher chance of having heard from the people we’re voting for the council.