[arrl-odv:33480] Electronic Balloting Plan and Demo

Dear ODV members, The E&E Committee has been working with Diane Middleton, CFO, to develop a plan and demo for Electronic Balloting. The attached report/plan is the result. This action is in response to the Zygielbaum-1 motion from the January 2021 board meeting which tasked the E&E committee with investigating the state of electronic balloting and delivering a report to the board. Based on the good background work of Diane, we feel that she has identified an appropriate vendor, Election Services Company. In order to allow electronic balloting during this year's Division Directors elections, we need to meet a pretty aggressive time-table because of QST and the vendor deadlines. The attached plan addresses all that. We ask your help in testing the electronic paper and electronic balloting processes. To that end, a "fake election" will go live from March 17 through March 21. This demo will be made available to all of ODV. Notice to ODV will be sent by the vendor ahead of the demo. Your observations and thoughts on both the electronic and paper balloting would be most appreciated. For any of you who would not normally use an electronic balloting process, we ask that you give it a try. We also ask your help especially in critiquing the parallel paper balloting process. Of course, we value your suggestions, corrections, etc., to the plan and to the process itself. Election Services Company is willing to work with us to meeting the observer requirements established in ARRL By-Law 20. E&E is going to consider suggesting changes to that by-law given that the election will be conducted by a certified third-party. It would be hard, for example, to observe the processing of electronic ballots. Paper ballots will not be counted by hand, they will be scanned and also processed electronically. Election Services is willing to consider an outside audit in case election results are contested, but that would be at our expense. It is our intent to formally present the plan at the upcoming EC meeting in order to get approval to proceed given the schedule. Thanks for your help. 73, Art K0AIZ Chair, Ethics and Elections Committee -- Arthur I. Zygielbaum, K0AIZ ARRL Midwest Division Director ARRL - The national association for Amateur Radio®
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Art Zygielbaum