MAC volunteers counted GVEA Districts 1, 2, and 3 ballots for their board members this evening. All incumbents retained their seats. district 2, with the publicity over the nominating committee not selecting Tom DeLong, the incumbent and forcing him to run by petition, had nearly double the return of the other districts. District 3 was a relatively close race. The nominee selected to run against the incumbent had already dropped out of the race.
District 1
Mailed out 5156 , valid returned 604 for 12%
Dan Osborne 539 94%
Roy Roehl 30
invalid (including a number of ballots for Tom Delong, who was in District 2) 28
District 2
Mailed out 5973, valid returned 1361 for 23%
Tom DeLong 791 58%
Frank Abegg 504 37%
Lee Santoro 62 5%
invalid 4
District 3
Mailed out 6109, valid returned 778 13%
Rick Schikora 399 52%
Ken Rydberg 375 48%
The remarkable thing to me was that approximately an additional 10% of the ballots returned, not counted above, were ruled invalid because they didn't have the signature of the member on the front of the envelope inside.
According to the GVEA attorney, this is a common percentage, but this means that 10% of the membership that took the time to vote were effectively disenfranchised for lack of following procedure. This is only a procedure, not a bylaw requirement and such a high percentage means to me that this requirement breaks the process and GVEA should look at removing it.
