First off, an organization needs to set down certain facts
regarding their officers and elections.
This information should be held in the organization’s bylaws, hence why
it’s so critical that organizations HAVE bylaws, and that ALL members have
access to these bylaws. (we covered bylaws in a prior Notes). What
information needs to be set down?
- What are the organization’s
elected officers?
- What are the
duties/responsibilities of these officers?
- What is the term of office
of these officers?
- When are elections held
and when do the officers take office? (in some organizations, elections
may be held days, weeks or even months before the new term of office,
allowing for a transition period, while other organizations have elections
with the new officers taking office that day).
- What is the method of
elections?
- Does the organization use
a nominating committee or just have open nominations?
- Are ballots mandated?
Nominating Committees
Now, an important part of many election procedures for
organizations, large or small, local or national, is the use of “nominating
committees”. These can be a very useful
and powerful tool in elections, but I have found that it is something too often
misunderstood and misused. Note, that many organizations do NOT use a nominating committee, and that is fine.
The ‘default’ way to conduct elections is to have open
nominations, in which people are asked to nominate themselves or others at a
meeting either before the elections or on the day of elections. The only problem is that too often not many
people may step forward. Using
nominating committees can help. It’s
important to keep in mind that the purpose of nominating committees is simply
to ensure that a full slate of candidates are put forth for consideration. Nothing more.
Further nominations from the organization should be allowed and
encouraged. The nominating committee is
not omniscient, and they are not putting forth the next group of leaders, but
putting forth possible candidates (hopefully the best possible ones, but there
are never guarantees). The organization
STILL must decide on who their leaders will be.
Nominating committees (nomcomm) are selected by the
organization, or by the leadership (as set forth in the bylaws). The selection and membership of the nomcomm
should not be secret, nor their activities.
The nomcomm should then put out to the membership that they are soliciting
nominations for candidates (as the positions to be held and their duties/responsibilities
should be set forth in the bylaws, this information should also not be secret). In addition, the nomcomm can ALSO seek out
candidates, especially if they feel the nominations received aren’t the best. Seeking out candidates should be in ADDITION
to submitted nominations, not instead of.
The nomcomm should then met and interview all candidates,
focusing on their understanding of these duties and their abilities to meet
them. Ideally, this should be done face
to face, but could be done via a conference call. Once completed, the nomcomm should make their
selection known. As noted, in most cases
the nomcomm should just select the single candidate for each position whom they
feel are the best for the organization.
A nomcomm CAN put forth more than one candidate, if allowed by the
bylaws. There is nothing wrong with
this, and I know of at least one organization’s nomcomm that does this
routinely, as they feel the nomcomm is intended to review all candidates, weed
out the unworthy, and put forth ALL worthy candidates.
Once a nominating committee has put forth its slate of
candidates (again, this should be made public knowledge to the organization),
nomination from the floor (i.e. from the organization at large) should still be
allowed. Again, a nominating committee is NOT
omniscient. There may be candidates who
should still be considered (and perhaps have been passed over by the
nomcomm). The organization is the one
who is selecting the future leaders, NOT the nomcomm. I have seen elections in which those who were
nominated from the floor won the election, and did a great job.
Once nominations from the floor are obtained, you now have a
set of candidates and may now move forward with elections.
I should also point out that in my opinion, it’s a sign of a
healthy organization (in terms of membership numbers and enthusiastic members)
when there are several people who want to run for each position. If you have an organization in which you
basically have to beg and plead with people (someone, anyone) to run for any
office, something is not right.
Candidate Forms/Nominations Forms/Commitment Forms
At this point, I should point out something I see some
organizations do that tie in with nominations.
These are not a parliamentary matter, but just good management
practices. Some organizations expect
officer candidates to read and sign a “candidate form” that covers the
positions' duties and responsibilities, usually with an agreement that they
agree to met the expectations of the position or be removed from office. This is usually used by organizations which
don’t use a nominating committee or the like, as this is a main job of such a
group (see above). Similar forms are often used by some organizations with appointed officers/leaders
or even committee members, to ensure they have committed to carrying out their
duties or to achieve some goal, or be removed.
Conducting elections
Ok, so you have nominations.
How, then, do you conduct elections?
There are basically two ways.
The first is used when you have obtained all your
nominations up front (either with a nominating committee and then open
nominations, or with just open nominations), usually at a separate meeting from
the elections. The secretary should
create a ballot with all nominations listed for each office, as well as space
for write-in candidates (if the bylaws allow, and they should). The ballots are distributed on the day of
elections, and then gathered by the tellers and the results given (more on this
below). Apart from having candidates
speak, this makes elections go fairly smoothly.
The second is usually done when nominations and elections
are done on the same meeting. Often,
nominations and elections are handled for each office separately. Usually the chair re-iterates the duties of
the position, and then asks for nominations.
When it’s clear all possible nominations are obtained, nominations for
that position is closed and the election is done, ideally with secret ballots (members
can write the person they are voting for on it). These are then collected by the tellers and
the results given, and then you move on to the next officer election. When you add in having candidates speak, this
process can be very time consuming compared to the first and, depending on the
number of positions to be held and possible candidates, can be very tiring.
Now, some other matters and questions about elections.
Tellers
You need to have 2-3 people appointed as tellers. These are the people who will gather the
ballots and announce the results. With
youth groups, I would recommend your adult advisors do this, as they should
ideally be neutral. They should report
the results of elections by stating how many votes each person received (including
write-ins!). These should be recorded in
the minutes, and the tellers’ report is actually kept in the organizations
records. A good practice is to have a
motion to destroy the ballots, else you are forced to keep those as part of
your records.
Run for more than one position?
No clear winner?
What if you have 3 or more people running, and none get a
majority vote (which is required to win an election)? Well, the mistake here is that too many
people assume the default action is the drop the person with the least votes
and hold the election again. NOT
SO. IF this is what your bylaws state,
that is fine, but the default action is the hold the election again with ALL
the same candidates. And to keep doing
so until you have a majority. What will
occur is that some people will shift their vote, and what can occur is the
person who originally had the least votes wins the election (this is known as
the “dark horse”), due it being the ‘second choice’ of most people.
Preferential voting
We stated above that people can run for multiple
positions. Now, if you handle elections
for each office separately, that’s not a problem, but it can be a problem if
you hold one election for all positions at once. A person may actually obtain a majority vote
for two positions. They can only hold
one, which eliminates them from having the second. But with the second you now don’t have a
clear majority. What do you do? You can have a run off, but what you could
have also done is allowed for ‘preferential voting’, where people give their
second (or even third) choice. If their
first choice is eliminated (say by winning another elections), then their vote for
their second choice would go into effect.
I rarely see this method used when elections are held at a face to face
meeting, due to the ease of doing a run-off vote, but usually done with ballots
by mail where doing a runoff can be costly and time consuming. But it is there.
Resources
As always, I like to include some resources. I haven’t found too many resources devoted to
just elections within organizations that I liked, other than the NationalAssociation of Parliamentarians
work called Navigating Through
Nominations: A Handbook for the Nominating Process, which costs
$10. There is also their Leadership
Spotlights booklet on Nominations and Elections, which costs $3.
[this Note was reviewed by Patricia McDougle, Professional
Registered Parliamentarian.]
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