George Heagerty, our Regional Coordinator with USA Cycling, conducted the election, which concluded on December 27, 2005. He announced that I won, 15 – 9, over Robert Havens, with 24 clubs voting. There was some confusion about which clubs voted. I did not receive a list of participating clubs from George until 1/12/06, and there were still discrepancies. None of them seemed likely to affect the outcome of the election, but it was disappointing not to be able to get an accurate and complete list of which clubs had participated, and their email addresses.
One of the problems with conducting association business by email is the lack of feedback. How can you tell when club contact information is incorrect? How do you safeguard against qualified clubs being excluded from voting? How do you conduct a rollcall by email, to find out if you’ve established a quorum of participants?
I’ve attempted to encourage folks to reply to association emails by *at least* replying with “I’ve received your message, I will consider your proposal, and I will reply by (date).” Then it would just be a matter of deciding between us what a reasonable lag time should be.
It seems likely that at least some association business can be conducted by email, as long as we establish some workable rules.