We have always had low numbers in your region for some reason, so this expansion of search was inevitable.

Yes, unfortunately that's the case. We expected that too, which is why we didn't exclude the expansion in our application.
However, I didn't expect it to be so few after all. As already mentioned in the post, there are indeed some contributions which, however, are not eligible for an SC vote for various reasons.

I do hope we get to see some (even if it's just one face) new faces

I hope too :-)