Don’t Rock the (NAFA) Boat!

What would happen if NAFA was forced to declare its most recent election “invalid”?

Would the earth quake?  Would the sky fall?  Would it be the end of Flyball?  I don’t believe any of those things would happen but, here is what I do believe.  NAFA is sitting on a Time Bomb and its name is the 2009 Board Elections.

Two incumbent members of the NAFA Board who were campaigning for re-election were listed on the NAFA website on the Election/Awards committee.  The By-Laws do not require an Awards committee but, they do require an Election Committee and Board members who are up for re-election are barred from serving on the Election Committee.  This is specific in the By-Laws and has legal consequences for NAFA if it is not followed.

Soon after the ballots were mailed out to the delegates, NAFA officials received complaints from Club Owners that the ballots were not in compliance with the NAFA Corporate Policies and Procedures.  The complaints were specific enough in nature and great enough in number to warrant this post to the Flyball list by Dale Smith, Election Committee Chair:

I’ve gotten a couple questions on the new consolidated format I used for the ballots this year, so I’d like to take a few minutes and provide some further information.

Years ago, NAFA used to send a letter to Club owners with the start of each new racing year, requiring them to assign their earned delegate votes to individual delegates within their Club. Owners who failed to assign their delegates within 30 days, lost the delegate votes they earned. When election time rolled around, individual ballots were mailed to each assigned delegate – completely independent of the Club owner.  Around 2003, the NAFA Board of Directors enacted a change to assign all delegate votes to the Club owner. This prevented Club owners from losing delegates for failing to assign them and reduced the number of mailing addresses and the amount of mail that NAFA had to deal with.

With this change, the Club owner became the sole representative of their Club in all NAFA elections. Some Club owners still consult with other members of their Club in delegate voting matters, while others act as the sole representative of their Club. NAFA does not get involved in internal Club politics and supports the choice of the Club owner in how they deal with delegate voting matters. Even with these changes, however, NAFA continued to mail separate ballots to the Club owner – one for each vote to which they were entitled.

This practice changed in the mid-2000′s as more and more items outside of annual elections were sent to delegate vote. For these delegate votes, the ballots were consolidated to a single piece of paper containing multiple votes. Club owners still retained the choice of consulting with their Club if they desired before they cast the votes assigned to them.

This year, faced with mailing almost 2000 pieces of paper, I chose to consolidate the annual ballot into a single piece of paper for each Club owner. This multi-vote ballot represents all the delegate votes earned by that Club, and much like the other delegate votes, allows the Club owner to consult with others if they choose, before casting the votes assigned to them.

The unique part of the annual ballot is the number of choices provided on the ballot. Each ballot contains not only the Board of Directors candidates, but also the Clyde Moore Memorial Hall of Fame and Regional MVP choices as well. It was not possible to design a ballot that provided an individual choice for each vote for each candidate, as has been done with past consolidated ballots. In doing some research into the past three annual elections, I found that only one or two instances existed in each election where a group of ballots that represented multiple votes for the same Club were not voted identically. The trade-off I chose was to keep the ballot readable and simple for the vast majority that appear to vote all their ballots identically, while providing an option for a Club owner to “split” their multi-vote ballot into individual votes if they wish to vote them independently.

I should also emphasize, that in doing the ballot research, I was unable to ascertain which Clubs or individuals choose to vote as a block and which do not. The relationship between a ballot and who it was mailed to is broken as soon as the ballot is cast. This a fundamental tenet of the NAFA Electronic Balloting system, to protect the privacy of the voter and the integrity of the election.

This morning, I added a function to the NAFA balloting page to allow a holder of a multi-vote ballot to split the ballot on the website without contacting NAFA. If you experience any issues with this function, please drop me a note. Once you vote one or more of the ballots I cannot help you as the information needed to fix an issue goes away when the ballot is actually voted.

As before, you can still contact NAFA at flyball@flyball.org and we will split a ballot for you if you wish. If you have questions about this year’s ballot, feel free to drop a note to flyball@flyball.org or to me personally. I hope you will find this year’s ballot easier to use than in year’s past and I encourage everyone who has earned a delegate vote, to use it. These votes are one of your primary voices in this organization and we certainly value the participation of everyone in NAFA flyball to shape this organization for the future.

Dale G. Smith

That would seem to answer all questions and ease any doubts but, I have it on good authority that it did not.

Because, while an invitation is extended through this very public post to “feel free” to ask any questions whatsoever, the truth is that specific questions and requests that were posed to the NAFA Board by participating candidates remain unanswered (non-responsive) to this day.

Since we are nearly two months post-election, it must be assumed that there will be no answer from the NAFA Board that will impact the results in any manner.  Unfortunately, the NAFA Board itself knows that there are valid concerns that remain unaddressed.  I guess they are hoping that those who have a valid case alleging that this most recent election is invalid will just go away.

While that would simplify life for the NAFA Board, is this scenario in the best interests of NAFA?

I don’t think so because public trust in our elected NAFA Leadership is the heart of this issue.  These issues need to be addressed in a manner that is fair to all parties concerned, i.e. NAFA Delegates, NAFA Candidates, and NAFA Officials.

NAFA should contact all the Candidates who participated in the 2009 election and hold a teleconference meeting identifying each of these issues and propose a settlement agreeable to all the parties concerned.  This will remove uncertainty, protect NAFA, and it’s the right thing to do.

Larry

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