Matt, 

Thanks for your service to the League, and don't be a stranger. 

A direct mail piece for a one-time mailing costs about a dollar per piece, printed and mailed. This might be fine for the Dakota division with 2500 or so members, but Southeastern is 15,000 members. The marketing effectiveness of direct mail is abysmal, by the way, and I know the ARRL does a lot of it. What percentage of "birthday discounts" are redeemed?

I agree with Ria - email disclosure would present a legal problem, but an ARRL sponsored "blind email" for candidates to reach out to members during a campaign should be provided to all qualified candidates. 

The candidates could send up to one email per week after qualifications are announced, to all members who have "opted-in" to ARRL Division Communication. Members could then "opt out" of campaign emails, in accordance with Federal law. No one "gets a list" and every candidate has an equal basis to reach potential supporters. Content could be monitored for ethics issues.

It is plain to see how a commercial interest might want to help a Director get elected. The rumor mill is that contributions have been made to certain candidates, some into thousands of dollars. Certainly, we have heard these rumors - members have complained to me about them.

Our tradition is that ARRL is truly independent - our members expect this.

I would propose an ethics rule that:
  1. The source of and amounts of campaign funds be disclosed via affidavit by each candidate by the date all ballots are due.
  2. No funding from anyone except members and affiliated clubs within the Director's Division be accepted.
  3. All campaign contributions more than $100 from any single entity be disclosed publicly, identifying the donor.
Finally, no outside gift of equipment or services should be accepted by any Director or ARRL employee at any time. I was approached by two different vendors offering "special deals" when they spotted my badge at hamfests. Let's make sure that everyone understands that this isn't tenable. 

Thoughts about this? Can we discuss this here with an eye toward an agenda item for January?
 
Mickey Baker, N4MB
Palm Beach Gardens, FL
“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead." Robert K. Greenleaf


On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 6:15 AM Matt Holden <mtholde@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you for overseeing a fair election.
Having gone through two contested election cycles, I would like to
share my thoughts on modernizing parts of the election cycle.

The membership mailing list request process needs a 21st century
overhaul.  Get out of the label printing business.  I would like to
see the paper printout and self adhesive label options removed from
the election label request form (example attached).  The HQ staff has
better things to do than print out labels.  I recommend the only
electronic file formats offered be Excel or comma delimited (CSV).  I
think I'm too young to know what the QCQ format is.  My opponent used
a professional direct mail marketing company to produce and distribute
his campaign literature and I think this will be the norm, by well
funded elections, going forward.  Candidates provide the excel or CSV
file, along with their letter, to the printing company and the pros
take it from there.

Electrons vs paper. I would like to see the candidates nomination form
and election label request form be online forms.  COVID-19 made it a
bit awkward to collect paper nomination signatures.  With an online
form, the ARRL member could login to arrl.org, submit a call sign &
name and click the "OK" button to nominate a candidate.  This would
reduce staff time vetting paper signatures because only ARRL members
can login to arrl.org website and submit a nomination.  The election
label request form is also worthy to be replaced by an online form.  I
paid about $8.00 for the mailing list.  Is it worth the HQ staff time
to collect the fee?  The FCC discovered the vanity call sign fee
collection was costing them more money than they were collecting and
dropped the fee.  I would like to see the ARRL drop the electronic
mailing list fee altogether.  One less fee might entice less affluent
members to run for office.

Email addresses.  Why aren't email addresses included in the
membership roster provided to candidates?  It is an empty column in
the Excel file provided to me.  An email message is a less expensive
way to communicate with the membership and the way most business
communication is conducted in the 21st century.  Perhaps a less
expensive way for candidates to contact the members would entice more
women, minorities and younger tech-savvy members to run for office?

Paper Ballots.  Stick with paper ballots.  Paper is king.  It's going
to take a while before most ARRL members are going to participate in
the electronic balloting process.

Election cycle duration.  Could a few weeks be chopped off the back
end of the calendar? 45 days is more than enough time for most members
to submit a ballot and enough time for most members to request a
ballot, should they not receive one, and cast their vote.  I suspect
some component of the director election schedule is interwoven with
the section manager election schedule, so I suspect nothing will
change here.

Respectfully Submitted,
Matt Holden KØBBC
_______________________________________________
arrl-odv mailing list
arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org
https://reflector.arrl.org/mailman/listinfo/arrl-odv