When should elections be
held
and other related issues
Central
Author: Alan Hodge
Co-Author:
Mark Kaprielian
January 2001
Just prior
to creating this position paper was the recent decision of the Board to change
the term of office to better align with the calendar year and to establish
clear policies and procedures for the conducting of elections. This effort was done as part of the larger
effort of updating the club charter.
Since the announcement of these plans, several questions and points for
consideration have been presented to the board. This document attempts to restate the general concerns raised and
provide a well-reasoned response to each.
Question
1:
It will be more difficult to do recruiting for the officer
positions during the holiday season. People are likely to be busy with
shopping, family, etc., it will be tough to get their attention to consider
running for the Board. What are the
attendance figures for the December event that follow long event that starts in
November?
Response:
When is it
ever easy to recruit people for the Board?
I'm not persuaded in theory that it will be any more difficult in
November/December than in January/February, although if experience proves it to
be so (how can it get harder?), we can always change back. Attendance runs about half of the yearly
average. The December event is usually
a novelty event and the nights skirt around the Christmas and New Years
holidays. Voting is slated for the
November time frame and recruiting for the board will necessarily have to take
place well before then.
When was
the last time there was any real voting going on? Since 1995 (and perhaps earlier) there has not been a year when
we had more nominees than positions.
Voter response is generally dismal for any election and the huge
majority of the votes casts are likely to be by those who happen to show up at
the club to play on election night. The
Board had reasons for changing the term that had nothing to do with increasing
(or maintaining) the level of membership participation in the election. It doesn't seem to make much sense discount
those reasons in favor of possibly increasing membership participation in the
elections.
Question
2:
Terms of
office should overlap critical periods of time, not be coincident with them. It has been said that it makes a convenient
break when we consider filing taxes and such.
Why would we want a potentially new officer to have to come in and learn
last year's activities just when he's responsible for acting on them? The officers who have been overseeing the
programs of the club should hang around long enough to finish their work, and
new officers should take over during as lull, not a flurry, of activity.
Response:
A
different point of view to "Why would you want a potentially new officer
to have to come in and learn last year's activities just when he's responsible
for acting on them?" would be because that is the best and quickest way to
learn them and the best way to ensure that a transition is done effectively. I (Hodge) am a case in point: I have been
"Treasurer" for a year but have learned (done) none of the
Treasurer's particular functions, except for depositing money and collecting a
few miscellaneous documents in an organized manner, because I have not been required
or enabled to perform them. There are
various reasons for this, mostly a lack of continuity extending back many
years. Moreover, I would not expect
that someone would be elected President, Treasurer, or Program Director who did
not have some prior Board experience from which he would have learned something
about how to do those jobs. It's
possible, of course, and if someone wants to run for those offices without
Board experience, he is within his rights to do so; but if he does, and is
elected, I don't see that his predecessor in the office has any extraordinary
duty to train him in the job that he voluntarily sought under those conditions.
Regarding
"The officers who have been overseeing the programs of the club should
hang around long enough to finish their work ...." This is true regardless of when the
transition of officers takes place. I
personally (Hodge) would be in favor of formalizing a policy that says that at
least the three Officers serve an additional month (or whatever) after their
12-month term (Past President, Past Treasurer, Past Program Director) to ensure
that they are officially available to the new Officers for advice and
assistance.
"... new officers should take over during as
lull, not a flurry, of activity."
I disagree. Even with a
transition in January, I don't believe the situation will qualify as being
"time critical" or urgent -- meaning that there will be ample time
for an intelligent transition. On the
other hand, I foresee a difference in the quality of the transition according
to whether it happens in a "flurry" or a "lull." I take "flurry" to mean that
things need to be done "now" (taxes, annual corporate filings,
whatever). To have the new and old
Boards working together to do the "real thing" when it needs to
happen not only ensures that the new Board is exposed to all the details
required but also gets the experience of actually going through the
process. Now suppose that we transition
in a March "lull." The old
Board will have done all the filings (presumably -- "finished its
work") before the new Board comes in, so now the transition is "Here
are the documents, and I'll tell you about what you will need to do nine or ten
months from now ... good luck."
And nine or ten months later the new Board (having not looked all that much at
the material because no action was required for several months) is trying to
make sense of the material and remember what it was told nine months
earlier. I'll wager the
"flurry" transition will be the more effective.
Finally,
let's not suppose that there will be a annual turnover in officers, especially
not for all officers. In theory there
could be, of course; but the reality is that officers in organizations like MCC
serve as long as they like. Transitions
will be the exception, not the annual rule.