[amsat-bb] Electronic voting (was Re: 2018 Corrected AMSAT

[tjschuessler at verizon.net]

The society of Broadcast Engineers http://www.sbe.org has been conducting
electronic voting for it's officers and board members for several years now.
Please contact John Poray, SBE executive Director or James Leifer, elected
President to see how SBE does it and how effective it has bee.  Email
addresses for these folks can be found in the "About Us" pages.

Tom Schuessler, N5HYP
EM12ms


Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:23:36 +0000 (UTC)
From: Brennan Price <mailto:brennanprice at verizon.net>
To: "mailto:amsat-bb at amsat.org" <mailto:amsat-bb at amsat.org>
Subject: [amsat-bb] Electronic voting (was Re: 2018 Corrected AMSAT
	Board of Directors Ballots)
Message-ID: <mailto:1165037184.6838066.1531952617004 at mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

 ARRLtried electronic balloting for Directors and Vice Directors for a
three-year cycle not long ago. Physical ballots were mailed only to those
members without email addresses on file. Members with emails on file got a
link to the contractor's (SBS) online voting site.
Voter participation in the few contested ARRL elections during that cycle
plummeted, and the cost was pretty much a wash (it costs money to do
electronic voting securely). The difficulty is that an email directing
voters to a voting site is easily lost in the noise compared to a paper
ballot received in the mail. This phenomenon is not uncommon; the same thing
happened when the Virginia State Bar implemented online voting around the
same time, with the same vendor.
ARRL abandoned electronic balloting. VSB has kept it, and has dealt with
declined participation. There are merits in both approaches, but the
argument that electronic balloting is better and cheaper is fallacious.
(Same thing applies to electronic publication as compared to paper--paper ad
rates command a premium for a very good reason.)
73 de Brennan N4QX

------------------------------