#1 – Voting for Officers and Board of Directors
#3 – Clarification of electoral process
#4 – Elections when more than two candidates are running for the same position
This grouping of proposed amendments affects when and how Members vote for the Board of Directors as well as the process for elections when there are more than two people running for a particular seat on the Board.
NOTE: Although any of these proposed amendments can be adopted without the others also being changed, for the purposes of this discussion, they are treated as a group because the reasons for suggesting these changes are similar.
Currently, nominees for an open Director position on the Board are required to run against a specific person. In all cases where three or more candidates are running for one seat, NCRA Voting Members narrow down the candidates to only two at the Annual Business Meeting. That means that only Voting Members who attend the Business Meeting can vote for all of the candidates. The remaining two candidates are included in the online voting ballot, which is open for 12 hours following the end of the Annual Business Meeting. The results of the election are announced the following morning, effectively at the start of the NCRA Convention & Expo.
The proposed amendments seek to ease some of the burdens put upon the candidates and return to a more courteous system reflective of the Association’s long history.
Proposed amendment #1, Voting for the Board of Directors offers two benefits to Voting Members. First, they will have a longer period, double the prior 12-hour window, in which to cast votes in contested elections. Second, by voting prior to Convention but after the continued use of various means to allow Voting Members to vet the candidates, all Voting Members will be able to participate equally in voting.
For proposed amendment #4, Elections when more than two candidates are running for the same position, the benefits would be that all Voting Members would be in the position to choose from among all the candidates, instead of requiring a run-off phase at the Annual Business Meeting. When officers or directors are chosen by a plurality of the vote instead of by a majority, it allows for candidates for the same seats, such as the usual three Directors seats available on the Board, to be chosen by which candidates receive the most votes; that is, if three seats were available and five people were in the running to fill those seats, the people who received the first, second, and third largest number of votes would fill the three seats.
Proposed amendment #3, Clarification of electoral process, simplifies the language in the Bylaws by attaching the preparation of the slate of nominees to the election process instead of the convention.
This proposed amendment would have an effect on several other sections of the Bylaws. One area would be to delete the requirement to choose a candidate to run against. If adopted, the new amendment will put in place a more current practice for elections that would benefit all members by decreasing any rancor.
In the proposed system, candidates would be announced several months in advance of the change-over of the Board of Directors, as happens now. If two or more candidates are running for any open position, NCRA Voting Members would vote on candidates by electronic means, and the person with the most votes would win the open seat. If multiple candidates were running for open directorships, all of the duly nominated candidates would be listed on the electronic ballot, and the open director seats would be filled by the people who receive the top votes. Elections could take place electronically a month beforehand with members allowed to vote for a 24-hour period.
