Virtual Meetings & Electronic Voting

Virtual Meetings and Electronic Voting (District Council and District Executive Committee)

Per protocol 7.1, virtual meetings occur as recommended by the district director and are agreed upon by a majority of the district executive committee. Any agenda item that requires a vote must adhere to the following process:

• Notice of the electronic vote posted to the district website four weeks in advance of the vote opening.
• District posts the proposed agenda item at least 14 days in advance of the vote.

For the following agenda items, which are specific to the district council, a vote must adhere to the following process:

• District posts proposed budget at least 14 days in advance of the vote.
• District posts information about the proposed appointed district leaders at least 14 days in advance to the vote.

Virtual Meetings

District 39 uses Zoom to conduct our Virtual Meetings

Conducting the virtual meeting and electronic voting

During the meeting, a team should assist with managing the virtual meeting platform and the electronic voting platform, including the administration manager. As noted earlier, the meeting should start with housekeeping guidelines so that all attendees are aware of how the meeting will be conducted. The meeting will then proceed to each agenda item. If an agenda item requires a vote, then the discussions and voting will take place.

The district director or the chair of the meeting will call upon the attendees for questions and discussion as outlined earlier. Once discussion is over, the chair {opens the voting period} then asks the District Council to cast their vote.

Once the voting period is closed, the team managing the vote can manually close the vote and announce the results before moving on to the next item. The process will repeat until all agenda items have been addressed.

Tip:

Closing each vote manually will prevent the results from being changed. The person overseeing electronic voting should familiarize themselves with the features by practicing with the free trial.

Committees

• Virtual meeting management done by District Zoom Masters
• Credentials Committee  creates Ballot list based on meeting registration & Credentials confirmation.
• Elections management is done by Elections Committee with Administration Manager.

Electronic Voting

• District 39 uses Election Runner service to perform voting at District Council Meeting and Annual District Business Meeting.

Zoom Masters Committee

• District Council Meeting
  • Create Election Room for Election Committee
• District Business Meeting
  • Create Election Room for Election Committee & Candidate Monitors

Elections Committee

Election Setup

• Make sure Credit Card registered with Election Runner service is current
• Make sure we have discount code for Non-Profit
• Billing for Elections will be reimbursed via Concur
• District Council registered voter list is prepared in the form of an excel spreadsheet template by the Credentials committee.
  • Each member on this list may have up to 2 club votes if they are a President or VPE of multiple clubs.
  • Executive Committee are permitted one additional vote.
  • No member should have more than 3 votes.
  • Each voter entry must have a unique voter ID, to ensure their vote is counted separately.
• Ballots are created in collaboration with Credentials Committee
  • A test vote will be done to ensure each ballot is correct.
• Once Ballots have been tested, the District Council registered voter list will be applied to each ballot.

Voting Procedure

• Open Election Runner service to prepare for election
• Upon request from the District Director – specified voting window is opened
• voting window remains open until the District Director closes the voting window
  • Provide support for registered voters while voting window is open
• Upon request from the District Director – specified voting windows is closed
• Results from an electronic vote (Election Runner) do not need to be tallied, since they are automatically calculated.
• Results & Results link are reported directly to the District Director

Providing notice

Since the vote is conducted electronically, notifications should be sent to the voters once the vote is launched. Part of setting this up is establishing the voting period, or when voters can cast their ballots.

Once the ballots are created and ready to be sent to the voting members, you must determine when to send it. It can be sent prior to the meeting or right before the first vote, depending on what works best for your meeting.

Credentials

The Credentials Chair ensures that ballots are only issued to current District Council members. If possible, the Credentials Chair should be a Past District Director.

Credentials Committee

Processing credentials

There are some tasks that need to be completed before the vote. These tasks are very similar to the credential process at in-person meetings. Since the vote will not be held in-person, the credential process is completed prior to setting up the voting platform. The tasks you must complete include:

• Register all voting members prior to setting up the vote. This serves two purposes:
  • It creates a list of voters to be imported into the voting system
  • It determines if quorum is met or not based on the number of voters registered
• Determine the number of votes each member is entitled to, most commonly known as weighted votes. The club officer list from World Headquarters will help you assign the number of votes to each voting member.

Registering voters

To register voters, you will need to survey who will be attending the meeting. The District Council report from District Trio can be used to obtain the officer’s email address to distribute the survey. This determines the number of club presidents and vice presidents education who will be in attendance to see if quorum is met.

District 39 has done pre-registration survey via Zoom.

When registering for the District Council Meeting they ask the following questions.

• Name (first and last)
• Membership number
• Club number(s) in which President/VPE is representing
• Will you be attending the meeting?
• What is your preferred email address to receive the link to vote?
• Are you a District Officer?
• What is your position?

The survey should be distributed to all members who are eligible to vote.

• For the district executive committee meetings, this includes all division directors, area directors, the district director, the program quality director, the club growth director, the administration manager, the finance manager, the public relations manager and the immediate past district director.
• For the district council meetings, this includes all club presidents, vice presidents education and district executive committee members. However, members of the district executive committee do not count toward a quorum.

Set a specific amount of time for members to register. Once the registration period has closed, the results can be prepared. Members must attend the meeting to vote. As such, remove anyone who cannot attend the meeting. Once voter registration has been completed, your next steps are to:

1. Determine how many club presidents and vice presidents education will be in attendance. This determines if quorum is met.
2. Determine the number of votes each member is entitled to. Members holding multiple voting positions across clubs are entitled to a maximum of two votes.
3. Download the voter import template list or format the voter information per the instructions of the voting platform. Common fields include Name, Voter ID, Email and Weight (number of votes). Using the survey results and club officers list, you will have all the information to complete the import of voters.

Creating the ballots

The voting platform takes you step-by-step through the process of creating the ballots. Please note that if more than one agenda item is being voted on, you should create separate ballots for each item. If multiple agenda items are put onto the same ballot, the results will not be tabulated until after all items on the ballot have been voted on. For example, if the ballot includes both the approval of the district budget and district appointed officers, the results will not be posted until members have submitted their selection for both ballots.

Example Credentials Report

Credentials Committee Report	Date
Number of Clubs in Good Standing	___________
x 2
= Total club presidents & VPEs	___________
x 1/3
= Number of Club Votes required for Quorum	___________
Number of Club votes issued	___________
Club Quorum requirement met?	(Yes / No )
+ Number of District Executive Committee votes issues	___________
Total Votes issued	___________
Signed ___________________	Credentials chair