Yesterday Bitter got relatively steamed by her treatment by someone in the Secretary’s Office, and talked about an election related mistake on the ballot. It turns out that, while it is incorrect, it wasn’t a mistake. Someone at NRA explained it thusly:
The 30 BOD candidates with instruction to vote for not more than 25 is the Nominating Committee Report. It is Board Policy that the Nominating Committee Report be printed in the Ballot issue of the magazines. The Nominating Committee Report cannot be changed, no matter what happens between the time the Committee makes its report and the ballots are printed. The Nominating Committee gave its report before Jim Supica resigned from the Board. Jim’s resignation is the reason we are electing 26. The 26th highest vote getter will fill his unexpired, one-year term.
So basically, they were required by policy to print the wrong information. It was correct when it was written, but became incorrect through circumstance. I think this is something that the Board should reconsider. Either it needs to allow for changes that are matters of fact, or the Nominating Committee needs to take care not to include information in its report that might change between the time they make the report, and the time the ballots go out to membership. No doubt this confusion is depriving some members of a vote, and a concern of that nature deserves to be taken seriously.
Of course, as I pointed out to the person who sent that update, this didn’t stop the Secretary’s Office from including a note in the massive election section that some of the information is wrong due to printing deadlines or whatnot. The information may have been wrong, but accurate, but they still dropped the ball in communicating with members honestly and openly.
As I told that person, I believe that when dealing with the grassroots on these kinds of issues, it’s worth it to take 5 extra minutes out of your day and get it right. People are paying their salaries voluntarily, and I think some offices in Fairfax have a tendency to forget that all too often.
I’ll also add that it is still correct that the Secretary’s Office does not employ more than 550 people. So the lying aspect still stands.