The Q&A period for the Regional Advocate elections is half-done, and we wanted to share an update with our members on the status so far. The 2024 Regional Advocate Elections are a special out-of-cycle election to fill the first class of Regional Advocates for an extended term, so people can start helping out our regions as soon as possible, and we don’t have to wait until the annual meeting to get this important role filled.
Status Report
For this election, we received 23 legitimate responses to our nomination form. One withdrew prior to their name being announced, leaving the 22 names listed on our index. After nominations were published, two additional candidates withdrew. Of our 11 regions, two have three active candidates, five have two, and four have only one candidate.
Those candidates who are running unopposed will win office by acclamation, and will take office after the election on the same schedule as the other offices. It remains to be determined whether voters in those regions will receive a ballot, and whether those voters are counted for the purposes of calculating the quorum.
So far, we’ve evaluated a total of 19 community-submitted questions for the candidates. These are region-specific and are asked to all candidates for that particular region. After some merging and editing, we’ve sent these questions onward to the candidates. We’ll update the candidate pages as we receive responses. So far, six candidates have provided responses, which have been added to their candidate pages. Questions are due one week before the ballot is released, and answers are due when the ballot is released, though earlier responses will of course help ensure voters can review the information and make their decisions.
Judge Foundry’s 646 voting members have been listed on our provisional voter list, which has been posted to the forum on JudgeApps. We’re asking voters to verify their status and assigned region, so we can correct any issues before sending out ballots.
Ballot Information
The team is currently internally testing a sample ballot using our online voting platform. We’re ensuring that it provides all the features and options we need, that the ballot and counting behave as required, and that all necessary auditing reports and information will be available to voters who wish to verify the legitimacy of the process.
Voters in regions with only two candidates might be wondering how to use their ranked choice ballot. In elections with only two candidates, Instant Runoff Voting (the way we count votes for this election) is the same as traditional plurality voting. A ballot ranking Chandra first and Jace second is the same as a ballot which only ranks Chandra and skips Jace – second choices will not be relevant in races with only two candidates. As a reminder, ranking extra candidates will never hurt your preferred candidate’s chances to be elected – your later choices aren’t even checked unless your higher preferences have been eliminated.
In races with three (or more) candidates, it is important that voters rank all of the candidates for whom they have an opinion. If your first choice cannot win, then your vote will be transferred to your second choice, and so on, ensuring that your preferences still matter even if your favorite candidate cannot win.
Process Updates
In addition to electing Regional Advocates, we’re also learning about how to run our elections for Board of Directors later this year. We’ve already discovered that managing this whole process over email isn’t super ideal, and we’re considering better ways to handle candidate statements and Q&A in the future.
We’re also re-evaluating the character limits, as they aren’t long enough to give nuanced answers to complex questions, and we may either raise the default limit, or offer a certain number of automatic extensions. Our goal is to avoid giving voters too much stuff to read, as we know that all of our members have busy lives – but we also want to let candidates get into the details of their plans.
Voter Lists
We’ve received some feedback regarding posting of the voter list. We believe it’s important to share, so that members can verify the legitimacy of our elections, but we understand that some judges have different expectations regarding privacy. For their benefit, we want to be clear on what we’re required to do, and what we will do, with regards to voter lists.
We do not plan to post any type of voter list publicly. We do publish a voter list to Judge Foundry members by posting a link in a private forum on JudgeApps. We trust and expect Judge Foundry members to exercise discretion and to consider whether their actions are in line with the JudgeApps ToS and Privacy Policy and their agreements with Judge Foundry before sharing any information from a private forum.
We’ve changed the list to conceal part of the JudgeApps usernames, instead providing a working link to the JudgeApps profiles to allow verification of membership, certification, and region. The masked usernames hide all but the first and last three characters, and hide everything after the “@” sign in the rare case someone uses an email address as their username. This makes it slightly harder to associate usernames directly with members in bulk. The list now contains name, masked username with profile links, region, and number of votes. (Everyone has one vote, but the field is required in some cases by Minnesota law.)
Whenever a meeting of the members is taking place, by law, members are entitled to inspect and copy a member list including contact information for the purpose of communication with other members concerning the meeting. This includes both the scheduled annual meeting, as well as special meetings. The RA election is not a meeting, but the Board of Directors election will be part of the annual meeting, and we will be required by law to share a member list with email addresses upon written request from any member. The law prohibits members from using or distributing this list for any improper purpose.
Feedback
We’re open to any feedback on these or any other areas at elections@judgefoundry.org.