A little history about Board elections--and a wakeup call for the Board

Many new Owners have invested in our Club during the past three years and it may be worthwhile providing some history.

Here are the results of recent Board elections:

• 2017: the Nominating Committee nominated three candidates. One of the candidates who unsuccessfully interviewed with the Nominating Committee was not selected, but instead ran for election as a petition candidate. The petition candidate and two of the three Nominating Committee candidates were elected.
• 2018: the Nominating Committee nominated five candidates for three positions. No petition candidates emerged and three of the five candidates were elected to the Board.
• 2019: the Nominating Committee nominated four candidates for three positions. No petition candidates emerged and three of the four candidates were elected to the Board.
• 2020: the Nominating Committee nominated three candidates for three positions. No petition candidates emerged and the three candidates were elected to the Board.
• 2021: the Nominating Committee nominated four candidates for four positions. Three petition candidates emerged. One of the candidates ran unopposed and was elected. Of the remaining candidates, two Nominating Committee candidates and one petition candidate were elected.

There were a couple of interesting twists to this year's election. First, the Board decided to put its thumb on the scale in support of the Nominating Committee's candidates (November 5, 2021 Message from the Board of Directors: "We believe that our formal nomination process provides the best way for the Club to identify, interview[,] then select candidates."). I don't recall the Board meddling in a Board election since I've been an Owner (23 years), but maybe I just don't recall similar efforts in the past.

Not content to itself advocate for the Nominating Committee slate, the Board gave the Nominating Committee the opportunity to directly reach out to the Owners. In a "Message from the Nominating Committee" dated November 11, 2021, the Nominating Committee misrepresented that the Club had adopted the practice of a designated slate of candidates rather than a competitive election "over a decade ago." 

A few points. First, when it submitted its slate of nominees to the Board, the role of the Nominating Committee ended--the job of the Nominating Committee is to present the Owners with a slate of candidates--not to campaign for them. Second, this communication went out a week after the ballots had been issued by Vote-Now.com and the election was underway. Third, this communication went out prior to the candidate forum, yet didn't mention the candidate forum as a way for Owners to assess for themselves the quality of the candidates--both those nominated by the Nominating Committee and the petition candidates. And fourth, the Nominating Committee's contention that the "practice" of having a slate had been adopted "over a decade ago" is simply wrong. As noted above, the 2018 and 2019 Nominating Committees nominated more candidates than positions available. Furthermore, the Owners submitted petition candidates in two of the past five election cycles. And in each of those two years, one petition candidate was elected by the Owners.

The Board election has been completed and the identities of the four winning candidates have been reported to the Owners. What hasn't been reported to the Owners is the tally of votes for each candidate--only candidates can find out how many votes were cast for them. For some reason, the Board believes that hiding the results of a vote builds harmony in the community. This is consistent with the Board's penchant for secrecy and "smoke-filled room" politics. The By-Laws provide that directors be elected by a "written secret ballot." But that doesn't mean that the results of the election should be secret--it just means that no one can learn how any individual Owner voted.  But here's what we know (I'll focus just on the election of six people running for three seats on the Board):

• 418 Owners voted in the Board election (with a total potential vote of 1,254 votes)
• 182 votes were cast for Marcie Flynn (44% of the Owners who cast a vote votes for Marcie)
• 123 votes were cast for Al Rattacasa (29%)

Some Owners chose to vote for fewer than three candidates, because they did not support the remaining candidates (the so-called "bullet votes"). So probably about 1,200 votes were cast. 

If one were to assume that the Nominating Committee candidate who was not elected received 152 votes and the three successful candidates split the remaining vote evenly (248 votes each), about 47% of the total votes cast were cast for the three petition candidates.

One of the Board's conceits is that the Owners who are dissatisfied with the governance of our Club are "an agitated vocal minority" of the Owners. Here's a news flash. When the Board openly campaigns against the petition candidates and the petition candidates still receive well over 40% of the votes cast, there is widespread dissatisfaction among the Owners with the governance of the Club.

In my view, the Board election results actually understate the dissatisfaction of the Owners with the Board's governance of our Club:

• The Board should not be in the business of insinuating itself into an ongoing election--and it certainly shouldn't be giving the Nominating Committee a platform to advocate for its nominees. This inappropriate meddling by the Board and the Nominating Committee likely benefitted the Nominating Committee's candidates, which was certainly the intent of the Board.
• The timing of the election process needs to be fixed. The ballots went out before the candidate forum was held and many votes were cast before the petition candidates had an opportunity to debate the issues in an open forum. The sequence should be: Nominating Committee candidates announced; petition candidates emerge; candidate forum conducted; and then the ballots should be sent to the Owners. And, of course, the results of the election should be fully disclosed.

I wonder why the proposed changes to the By-Laws don't address this issue?