Annual Reports: Nominations & Elections Committee

Committee Members:

Katherine Bruner, Denise Glynn, Barry Herbert, Heidi Kuehl, Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Susan Reitzer, and JoAnn Hounshell (Chair)

Summary of Year’s Activities:

The 2014-2015 Nominations & Elections Committee solicited nominations and conducted the election of Vice President/President Elect, Secretary, and one Director for the CALL Board of Directors.

Detailed Report:

The announcement and call for nominations for candidates for Vice-President/President Elect, Secretary and Director was sent to the CALL membership on July 28, 2014.

The Board of Directors authorized the committee to conduct the Board election using the American Association of Law Libraries electronic elections platform. This year there were no members who did not have e-mail addresses on file with the CALL Membership Committee, so there was no need to send out any paper ballots. The Board authorized the election to begin on Friday, February 13, 2014, and end at midnight on Saturday, March 14, 2015.

Chris Siwa of AALL provided the Chair with a spreadsheet of CALL members, and the CALL Membership Committee provided a complete list of CALL members.  The Nominations & Elections Committee was able to determine which CALL members were eligible to vote. People who were eligible to vote were members in good standing who were either active, retired, or student members of CALL as of February 21, 2014, according to the by-laws. The Chair received photos and biographies of the candidates. These were posted to the AALL Election System and the CALL website along with all the pertinent setup information.

Beginning in February, the Committee or the CALL President sent regular e-mails to the CALL listserv reminding members to vote. At the end of the election, 124 electronic ballots had been returned out of a total of 238 eligible members. This represents a return rate of 52%.

The candidates and results were:

Vice-President/President Elect: Candidates were Todd Ito and Joe Mitzenmacher

Todd Ito was elected.

Secretary: Candidates were Diana Koppang and Eugene Giudice

Diana Koppang was elected.

Director: Candidates were Konya Lafferty and Kara Young

Konya Lafferty was elected.

The election results were certified on March 16, 2015. Four members of the Nominations & Elections Committee logged on to the CALL Election System Administration Site to view the results independently. They forwarded their results to the Chair via e-mail and agreed on the vote counts and results as above. The Chair contacted the CALL President of the results and notified all candidates via telephone on March 16, 2015. The CALL President announced the election results to the membership on March 16, 2015 via e-mail.

In addition to the election results, the Elections Committee received the following feedback regarding the election process:

The CALL Handbook now requires that all ballots be destroyed within 10 days of the end of the election. Chris Siwa confirmed with the Chair via e-mail that the election data had been destroyed.