News
Dear USATT Members,
I am in receipt of an official letter from Debra Yoshimura, Director of the USOC Audit Division, in which she announces the result of our recently concluded general membership election for an At Large Director.
Mike Babuin was declared the winner and we want to congratulate him on his re-election. Gerhardt Egri , the other candidate for the At Large Director, was contacted directly by telephone as a courtesy and given the news of the results. He accepted it in a very diplomatic fashion.
This is the first time I am aware that USATT used an electronic voting method with the electorate. There are Vote Service providers out there for these type of elections but I wanted to see if we could avoid those costs and do it on our own. Ashu Jain mentioned using Survey Monkey for his AAC elections and I asked Sean O'Neill and Andrew Horn to research this and set it up. Once set up they turned the account over to the USOC Auditor to change the pass codes and to be the sole person to access the results. We also took the step to mail hard copy ballots out to the segment of the membership who did not have e-mail addresses. Joyce Grooms and Andrew were very careful to be thorough and inclusive in the process of producing electorate lists and these were later verified by the Auditor against the returns received. So while not completely electronic, we have taken the first step in the electronic direction for future elections.
Here is what is significant:
- The costs of the election were significantly below what was spent in the last election cycle as the savings were a result of reduced printing and mailing costs
- We had a very significant increase in voter participation
This entire process was a source of anxiety for me personally from the early November organizational teleconference with the Nominating and Governance Committee, through the announcement of results from the Auditor. Special thanks to the N&GC members, Chairman Bob Fox, and members Lucinda McRoberts, Dan Parker and Jasna Rather. I also am very proud of the way that Sean O’Neill, Andrew Horn and Joyce Grooms responded to the need as we were in uncharted waters with this effort. We are confident that we will do an even better job in the next cycle in educating the membership in advance about any nuances encountered with the electronic voting mechanism.
Thank you again to all who contributed to this election process!
Sincerely,
Michael D. Cavanaugh