Compromising positions

I second Deb's call for ideas from you guys as to what you'd like to see happen to make DWAA an even better, more effective, member-friendly organization.

Here's something I'd like to help make happen: amend the DWAA Bylaws to eliminate conflicts of interest, particularly with respect to elections.

Currently, the Bylaws place incumbents in contested elections in an untenable position: they are required to officiate in elections in which they are candidates. For example, Article V, Section 5e, requires that "All ballots received by the Secretary before December 31 will be delivered unopened to the Annual Meeting where three (3) tellers appointed by the President will count them."

Look at it this way: would we want Barack Obama's Virginia campaign chairman to be responsible for delivering absentee ballots to the state Board of Elections? Of course not. John McCain's supporters would understandably cry foul, and Obama's supporters would cringe (or at least should) at the thought of the election being possibly compromised in such a fashion.

And yet, the DWAA Bylaws require both the incumbent President and the incumbent Secretary to officiate in a contested election just such a fashion. The Secretary is in charge of handling the ballots. The President appoints the tellers. They don't even have the option of recusing themselves so as to ensure that the election proceedings are above reproach. This is unfair to them, to the other candidates and to the members.

I know that Carmen Battaglia, current DWAA president, has appointed a committee to study the Bylaws, but as far as I know (Deb, can you update us?) that committee has not held a meeting. I know, too, that Carmen and the current DWAA secretary, Pat Santi, have promised that the ballots will be kept in a lock box until it's time to open them at the Annual Meeting. That's a great start, and I appreciate their efforts to reassure the members that this election will be a fair and honest one. But those efforts, unfortunately, are just a start. And while it's possible that the Board of Governors could agree on minor changes in procedure for this election -- for example, to have the ballots delivered to a post office box and to have two people bring the ballots from the post office box to the meeting -- what we really need is, at some point, to change the Bylaws so that this situation does not occur again.

Please understand: I am not, repeat not, questioning anyone's integrity here. What I am questioning is whether we can amend the Bylaws so that, in the future, people of integrity won't be forced to assume, ahem, compromising positions.

What do you all think?