From the AMIA Elections Committee

Dear AMIA Member:

During the meeting of the AMIA membership and the Board of Directors in Anchorage, a considerable amount of discussion was devoted to the fact that during the recent bylaws revision election the Board had access to the list of names of AMIA members that had voted and those that had not.  Early on in the election Board members used this access to focus their calls and e-mails to members as part of the bylaws revision and board expansion campaign.

Many members were very upset at this use of the voting mechanism and raised several pertinent questions about the conduct of the election.  Several of those same members attended the Elections Committee meeting the next day and offered the committee constructive criticism and advice on how to follow-up in reviewing and revising the elections process.

The Elections Committee learned of the Board’s use of the voting rolls through an anonymous complaint from an AMIA member.  We responded to the complainant and made a statement to the Board saying that while the anonymity of individual ballots was not breached, and no bylaws or the letter of the Elections Manual rules were specifically broken, the spirit of the rules was definitely strained in several cases.  The Committee discussed the concern and agreed that unilateral access to the membership's voting rolls while the election was underway should not have taken place, and that the complaint raised several questions that need to be addressed by the Board, the Elections Committee and the membership as a whole.