One Person, One Vote

Is it time for NAFA to reform its Voting System?

I don’t normally guest-blog on someone else’s website but, Larry asked some provocative questions in Let the People Vote.

“Isn’t it past time that NAFA let the people vote?…..It doesn’t seem fair to me that, we the people, the ones who pay our tournament fees and participate in this sport have no voice……why should club owners, judges, and board members be the only ones that have a vote?”

To date, there are over 50 comments on this article and more web traffic to The Flyball Blog than at any other time or any other subject!  And yet, no one has offered any compelling evidence why we should not change this system that we have right now. Commentators have offered their “opinions” as to why they oppose changing what we have but, they have been unable to provide any solid evidence that the current system is what’s “best” for NAFA.

The System is Broken

Larry has courageously reported that there may exist some voting “irregularities” in the most recent election for NAFA. In “The Hanging Chad of Flyball”, we are made aware that this year’s ballot was changed so that all a club’s votes were tabulated on one piece of paper.  Did this change “confuse” voters or tabulators in any way causing an incorrect tabulation of the votes? Did anyone vote online thinking they were casting ALL their votes for one candidate but, in the final tabulations, perhaps only one vote counted? Were the paper ballots that were mailed in correctly tabulated?

Questions left unanswered are: “Did this ballot conform to our rulebook? “Delegate voting may be conducted by paper ballot, electronic balloting, or a combination of both.” Does a single ballot violate this rule since “a combination of both” could not be accomplished with a single ballot?”

The word from a Board member was that voting patterns over the last three elections showed that only a few clubs split their votes, so only a single sheet of paper was sent to each club to save money. Who would be against “saving money” as well as the hard work burdening our volunteers with mailing out all that paper? …on the other hand, are we so preoccupied with saving dollars that we fail to respect the “rights” of a minority to split their votes or cast their votes in a “combination of electronic and paper”? …and, if our volunteers who work to present us our ballots, mail them out and count the results to present at the AGM are “overburdened”, why aren’t we recruiting more volunteers to help with the task? Or, commission an outside Accounting or Law Firm to do this (as provided for in our By-Laws)?

The History of NAFA Voting

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. When election time came, these assigned delegates each received their own unique ballot from NAFA. Each delegate could consult with their club in order to determine how they should cast their vote but, filling it out and mailing it in or registering their vote electronically was the sole responsibility of each individual delegate.

Around 2003, the NAFA Board of Directors enacted a change to assign all delegate votes
to the Club owner. This saved time and money because instead of mailing out all those ballots individually, the number of envelopes was reduced to the number of “active” clubs. But, it conferred upon “Club Owners” a super status of sorts. Instead of just one ballot, they held the power of ALL of a Club’s earned votes. For some, this is not a problem. They simply distributed those accumulated ballots among their club members until they ran out of ballots or members. Others discussed the votes among their members and maybe even sought out a consensus among them. Still, others who run their organizations in an autocratic fashion probably simply voted those ballots any way they saw fit.

The bottom line to all this is: For the purpose of saving “work” and “money”, NAFA reduced each club to a single “delegate” and whatever that delegate did with a club’s earned “vote(s)” was OK with NAFA. NAFA does not get involved in the internal structure or business of the individual clubs.

Weighted Voting

Why do clubs “earn” votes in the first place? This dates back to the basics on how NAFA organized and promoted the sport of Flyball.

Flyball didn’t develop in a vacuum. All kinds of dog sports have been organized for years and years prior to Flyball. They were all organized in some kind of “club” form. As an example, each breed recognized by the American Kennel Club (AKC) has its own “parent club” that dictates their unique “breed standard” to the AKC. There are also local kennel clubs that organized on a geographic basis that were interested in putting on “Dog Show” events and they sought “sanctioning” from either the AKC as an all-breed event or from a club organized around promoting one specific breed.

The AKC also sanctions dog obedience events and confers “titles” earned in these activities. These events are organized and hosted by clubs whose purpose for existing was promoting dog obedience training and competition.

Flyball “evolved” out of clubs who existed to promote training dogs and competing. So, first came the clubs and then came Flyball. …and then came NAFA. NAFA was founded by 8 dog obedience clubs who were able to enter 12 “teams” in demonstrations of Flyball at Horse Show events. By organizing “NAFA”, they were able to promote the sport beyond Detroit and the Toronto/Hamilton area of Ontario, Canada. And, they governed their affairs through the “delegate” system. The one dog obedience club that was able to field 4 teams of dogs and handlers enjoyed more influence in decision making since they were simply larger in size.

That is the “roots” of the # of delegates earned is pegged to the # of teams entered in NAFA events.

Why do NAFA Board members, Regional Directors and Head Judges have a vote above and beyond their Club’s vote?

The short answer is that NAFA always allowed person’s with a “special interest in Flyball” the right to vote in its elections. The reason needs some explanation.

Owning a team or being a team captain is always fraught with risk of losing team members or their cooperation. Becoming a Head Judge for NAFA didn’t require you remain active with a club or dog. Same goes for RD or Board member. Why should you lose your right to vote in NAFA affairs if you are working for NAFA as a volunteer but, your team leaves you? The Board decided that NAFA volunteers working as Judges or RDs, BoD’s should be considered “delegates” separate from affiliation with any unique club.

The end result of years of accumulation of “votes” by a club is this: Some clubs recognized that they could increase their influence in NAFA affairs by stuffing the ballot box in all kinds of creative ways. You earn one vote up to two votes for hosting a tournament so, make sure you host one event on Saturday and a second on Sunday and that equals two votes for your club. Make sure you enter enough teams/events to earn 6 votes; now 2 + 6 = 8 votes. Someone wants to be a Judge? Great, add another vote for your club! Want to host more events than just two? Register another club in your name just for hosting events and you can get 2 more votes.

I am not making fun of the many, many clubs out there who enjoy Flyball and work hard to put on events for all of us to enjoy. Not at ALL! What I am pointing out is how the system has been worked by some people/clubs to gain an advantage, perhaps within a Region, that probably has skewed the tabulations several times. Is this “fair” to the clubs who have fewer resources than these “Super” clubs?

The Problem for NAFA

As long as my club’s delegate/team owner was willing to provide a unique ballot to as many of our club’s members as NAFA would calculate we had earned so that we each, individually, could vote them as we saw fit, I thought that was “fair”. …but, NAFA added an extra burden to this year’s election cycle that I think very few people are aware of.

This year, we shifted from voting our ballots earned in racing year 2008 to include racing year 2009!  My team owner and I attended the Board meeting in Detroit where implementation of these voting calculations were discussed. The logistical problems facing the Technology and Election Committees were enormous. Before earned delegates for each active club could be tabulated, all racing results from all sanctioned events had to be in NAFA’s possession. The racing year ended 09/30/2009. Any event that experienced a delay in reporting their results for any reason would delay these tabulations for all of NAFA. Compounded by the fact that a clause was included that required that the delegates were to be tabulated from BOTH 2008 or 2009 racing years and a club would be given the ‘greater’ number of votes for whichever timeframe. This was done so that a club who may have earned fewer delegates in 2009 than they did in 2008 would not lose an earned delegate vote before they had the opportunity to vote it.

The change was made so newer clubs would not have to wait two years before casting their votes but, I don’t think the NAFA BoD really understood the amount of work involved in making this change.

What we need to understand is that these logistical problems that NAFA has taken on will not go away. Next year, the same potential for delays in preparing ballots for the election will occur. That is because the Election Committee will not know how many ballots to prepare or how many each club earned until all of the racing results are in. Then, and only then, can the ballots be laid out, printed up, coded and mailed.

That’s why the AGM was moved back to mid-January.

The Solution

1. It is vital to the future of NAFA to cut the amount of work we expect our volunteers to do in order to accomplish our elections.

2. It is highly desirable to cut costs and save our organization money.

3. We need to maintain an elective process; no matter what “form” that process takes.

4. We need to adopt a process that treats everybody as an “equal”.

5. We need to be able to demonstrate clear benefits to all of us by adopting change.

Why ‘One Person, One Vote’?

1. Moving from a “weighted” vote to a “one person, one vote” system simplifies things and does away with the need to calculate anything. This relieves an already overburdened Election Committee of any need to wait for racing results to be reported.

2. If we shift to all-electronic voting, we will totally eliminate the need for postage, the need for printing ballots, the need to place each ballot in an envelope. This will result in significant savings.

3. Instead of expecting NAFA to deliver “ballots” to people for participating in NAFA, I propose that people ask for a ballot by registering with NAFA and providing an active CRN as proof of participating in Flyball. We register to vote in governmental elections to either prove residency or other eligibility to vote. Not everyone who is eligible actually registers but, if you cannot provide basic information that proves you have an interest in the outcome of an election, can we trust you to vote for “what is best”?

4. Registration saves unnecessary work for NAFA by limiting any ballot preparation to just those interested in voting. It will also save any unnecessary expenditure for the same reason.

5. One person, one vote treats everybody equally without regard to number of dogs owned, number of events entered or amount of fees paid to NAFA.

Saving money and volunteers’ time and efforts is clearly a benefit. Treating everybody as an equal is vital to the future of NAFA so that we can demonstrate to anybody with doubts that no one can carve out an “unfair advantage” for themselves or their club, or their Region or their dogs, etc.

JMHO,

…..Chris

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