When we last discussed this, software choices were supposed to be evaluated. Whatever is done we shouldn’t do like the 2013 cycle where the balloting process was filling out a word doc and emailing it. Personally I’m agnostic to software as long as it does the job effectively. Staff can best make that decision and support it. Ria, N2RJ On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 8:42 AM Baker, Mickey, N4MB (Dir, SE) < mbaker@arrl.org> wrote:
I support adopting electronic elections for ARRL.
We have UP TO five director, five vice director elections and 36 section manager elections.per year.
Some of these are very small elections, with a few hundred ballots.
Section manager elections are distributed – about a quarter of them per quarter.
This is a lot of electing. Historically, I believe that the section elections are quarterly so as not to stress staff. It seems as though half or more of section elections are uncontested.
A model like this might require a lot of interaction with a vendor. In order to keep costs reasonable, we should examine a vendor’s offering and determine how we interact with them to set up these many elections and what costs are.
This is not an inexpensive undertaking the way we do it now, but it is very flexible, particularly for the section elections. Selection of a vendor to do this won’t be inexpensive either, but if we don’t have an offset to recover costs – like reassignment of staff involved – the money we save is postage and printing.
I am surprised every day that so many of our members are not computer and smart device users. Standby for an outcry and demand that we accommodate folks with paper ballots.
--
*Mickey Baker*
*Director, Southeastern Division*
ARRL
Phone (561) 320-2775
Email: n4mb@arrl.org
*From: *arrl-odv <arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org> on behalf of Arthur I. Zygielbaum, K0AIZ <k0aiz@arrl.org> *Date: *Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 11:49 PM *To: *hopengarten@post.harvard.edu <hopengarten@post.harvard.edu>, arrl-odv <arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org> *Subject: *[arrl-odv:32222] Re: On-line Voting
Fred,
There are several companies that offer voting services. Before I raised my motion at the last Board meeting, I did research via Google and found several examples.
All the voting systems I have used, as a member of an association, have worked well. This includes voting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, IEEE, ACM, etc. (Actually I think the IEEE may have written their own.)
I absolutely agree that we should not write/maintain our own software. We should investigate the cost of such services, ask for references, and, if possible, ask for a demonstration in an actual vote.
73, Art K0AIZ
Arthur I. Zygielbaum, K0AIZ
ARRL Midwest Division Director
On 4/11/2021 10:17 PM, Fred Hopengarten wrote:
An *alma mater* of mine has just requested that ballots be cast for the Alumni Association Board, and the Overseers (two elections). They are using (for the first time that I’ve noticed) http://www.electionservicesco.com/pages/index.php
The votes that I cast went smoothly.
Their front page says: “Since 1989, employee-owned, Election Services Co. has successfully administered over 8,900 elections for stockholders, credit unions, membership organizations, non-profit organizations, alumni associations, professional organizations, cooperatives, music awards, military organizations, pension and retirement funds.
ESC manages elections on behalf of its clients comprising of over *fourteen million *members annually.”
I have no idea what they charge. But I suspect that using them would avoid the need to write our own software, with all that might entail.
-Fred K1VR
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