Hi Matt, I’m in agreement with the electronic stuff except for email. I think that there are legal and other reasons why email aren’t given out such as various laws around spam and the fact that people will unsubscribe or worse yet drop their membership if they get too much email. A better solution would be to allow candidates two chances to use a league operated email system to send out clearly labeled campaign messages. This way we aren’t giving out everyone’s email address and it’s limited in number. As far as electronic signatures go, we already do have that. Despite my attempt to amend the bylaws to officially code this failing, this is still implemented and practiced. Agreed on labels. All said thank you for serving on the Board and it’s been my pleasure working with you. I hope to work you on the air sometime. 73 Ria N2RJ 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