Artist-Blacksmith's Association of North America
Artist-Blacksmith's Association of North America
Special 2010 Elections Announcement
Hello:

Below is a courtesy announcement for the ABANA 2010 Elections Results and your
new ABANA Board Members.

Please forward this announcement on to anyone that you think might be interested.

Thanks,

Rome H. Hutchings, ABANA Member Services

ABANA 2010 Board Election Results
The ABANA election closed on the original schedule. The ballots have been counted and the results certified by the elections committee chair George Mathews.

The successful candidates are:
  • Gerald Boggs
  • Lance Davis
  • Ray Nager
  • Amy Pieh
  • Linda Tanner
We want to thank all the candidates. We also want to thank the board members who are not continuing into 2011 - Len Ledet, Rome Hutchings and John Yust.

On behalf of the ABANA Board of Directors,

Paul Boulay

Ps. Ballot cards received late will still be entered in the election tool drawing - hint, hint.

Letter to ABANA members on the recent election

The ABANA Board election issue of the Anvil's Ring was handed to the Post Office on September 28. Some folks received it the following week -- for others it took over a month for the Post Office to get it to member's mailboxes. Our timing was unfortunate at best. We were in competition with the tons of catalogs from mail order companies and all the propaganda and other campaign ads associated with the mid-term elections. We are looking into filing a complaint because it seems as if we paid for 2nd class periodical mail but got 3rd class junk mail treatment.

As much as I'd like to, I can't pin 100% of the blame on the Post Office. I set the schedule to comply with the bylaws but it was tight. The tight schedule was driven by the Board's desire to meet at least a week before Thanksgiving on one side and the publication schedule on the other.

The election schedule was based on it getting to the post office on September 21. The one week delay at the printers had several causes. There was delay caused by the extra time for an ad insert, for the ballot post card and waiting for the Hammer's Blow copy to show up. The Hammer's Blow was about a week later than the nominal schedule. Normally this is no big deal. But Rob Edwards and I both failed to pass on to Brian Gilbert that this issue was time sensitive.

We looked into creating an extension of the election. But the bylaws require election related matters go to the members either by a letter or in the regularly published magazine. When we looked into this there was still a chance that most all members would get the magazine on time. So in order to treat all the candidates equally we decided to stick to the published deadline.

At this point in time the ballots that have reached the Central Office have been counted and the election committee chair has certified the results. By the way the results are quite clear. We have separately tallied the ballots that came in late. They would not have changed the outcome at all.

Also if you haven't voted you can still participate in the voters raffle by sending in your ballots. We will hold that open until November 15.

The next question is what are we going to do to keep from having the same result next time. Several things:
1. Change the publication schedule to move it forward one week an issue so that we will end up 4 weeks sooner this time next year. This is something we should do anyway -- now the "Summer" issue gets to members mailbox in late October?? (We looked into doing a one time adjustment but apparently there are a bunch of librarians who would be upset at us so we have to sneak up on it.)

2. Move the election to the second rather than the third magazine of the year. We could do a separate mailing but that would add a $3000 expense item that the budget won't support.


3. Change the election committee procedure to require 60 days from the publication date till ballots are due in the case where we use the magazine for the election. (No bylaws changes are needed for that.)


4. Change the bylaws to allow electronic balloting and electronic notification.


Finally, I apologize to those of you who were not able to exercise your right to have your say in the running of the organization. Hopefully you can see that there was no deep dark conspiracy to deprive those far from the mailing house of their vote. If you are looking for someone to blame, I'm your guy.

Sincerely,
Paul Boulay
ABANA President
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Thanks and we hope to hear from you soon!.


Sincerely,
Rome Hutchings
ABANA Member Services