Elections is happy to announce that the membership deadline for voting in 2015 has been set at October 6, 2014 through October 6, 2015, inclusive of both dates. If you have or will become a member during this period, you will be eligible to vote in this year's election. Please note that this deadline comes before this year's October Drive, but if you gave in last year's October Drive, you will be eligible this year.
The election itself will be from November 6 at 12:01am UTC to November 9 at 11:59pm UTC. For more information, please read our voting instructions. Please note that the timing of the election has changed from last year; we've increased the period the election will be open from two days to four.
ETA: Development & Membership would like members to know that if you're uncertain of your membership status or dates, you can always ask them via the Development & Membership Contact Form.
Contact Form
We are very sorry to the four people who tried to submit our Contact Form earlier this week and received an error. We traced the error to our Captcha module, which was not behaving as expected. We have disabled Captcha on the form and have tested it; we believe it should work for everyone now. If the form still does not work for you, please comment on this post to let us know.
Proxies
If you will need a proxy to vote for you in this election, please read our proxy policy and follow the instructions in that paragraph. Proxy requests should be submitted via the Elections contact form. The deadline for proxy requests or changes this year is October 23, 2 weeks before the election. This will allow us time to confirm all requests and update the voter rolls.
Choosing the Dates
The decision about which dates to use for voter eligibility required discussion with the Board, our Legal Committee, and Development & Membership. The primary question was the 2014 starting date.
The OTW By-laws provide that membership lasts for one year from the date the most recent dues are received, and that Members must be in good standing for at least one month prior to an election to be eligible to vote. Hence, the last day to become a member to vote in this year's Nov. 6-9, 2015 election is October 6, 2015. In 2014, the organization had considered enacting an exception to this rule that would have shortened that time, making members who joined during the October 2014 drive eligible to vote in 2014, but not in 2015. Because the 2014 election ended up being uncontested, however, that exception was never implemented or announced.
The final decision was to be as inclusive as possible and go with the earliest start date that could reasonably be adopted. Under the By-laws, membership in the OTW lasts for 1 year, so that is the maximum amount of time we could put between the eligibility dates. Although October 6, 2014 comes before both the proposed exception date and the 1-month deadline for last year's election, we chose the 6th because it complied with the By-laws and provides for a full year's coverage, in case there are members who traditionally give on the same day every year, and because we felt this announcement is coming much later than would be fair to members otherwise. Therefore, members who joined during the October 2014 drive are eligible to vote in 2015.
Elections staff are preparing more comprehensive standards for voter eligibility dates for future years. We will be working on those with our fellow committees after this election cycle is complete.
Thank you all for your patience. We hope to see you at the polls!