Now that the whole membership gets to vote on the board of directors and bylaw changes we have received lots of questions. I will try to answer some of the most common questions.
Q: What is the whole process?
A: A: The MWCA process works like the absentee process for folks who are on the “I always want an absentee ballot system for elections in Montana. “
- You are mailed one ballot to your “legal” address of record.
- You ballot comes back in a MWCA official ballot return envelope.
- The envelope will be checked against the official member mailed ballot list. This will be just like the old sign in sheet for those of you who have vote before at the conference.
- Once envelopes have been verified as a valid member, then the envelopes are separated from the ballots.
- Only after all ballots are separated from the envelopes will they be counted. They will be counted by two individuals.
Q: I never have voted before what changed? Why now?
A: Prior to this year the only people who got to vote were those who attended the annual conference. A change was made to the bylaws to do a mail ballot to all members to provide a more inclusive election.
Q: Why is my name on the return address, isn’t this suppose to be secret ballot?
A: Just like the general elections held for president we are required to ensure that the ballot is from a valid member. This official envelope ensures that. This is done to ensure Joe Blow doesn’t make 55 copies of the ballot and send them back to stuff the ballot box. This was modeled after a similar type of system is done with your US general election ballot. You must sign your general election return envelope stating it is you voting. If you do not return your general election absentee ballot in the right envelope or fail to sign your envelope affidavit your ballot could be rejected because it is not verifiable. They are asking you to trust that no one make violates your privacy on a general election and the same is true for us in our case.
If you have any other questions please let us know.