This year was the first that SABR members had the option of voting online. Here at the national office, we spent much of our morning with the Tellers Committee getting paper ballots inputted, determining the final count, and preparing for their certification of the results.

I'm using this post to provide some more technical details and catalogue and address some of the complaints we heard about the online voting process.

The election process

The election was run using a subscription to BigPulse, an online voting provider. It was conducted using preferential voting for directors and a simple majority for the bylaw change, the same system already in place for SABR's elections.

Earlier today, the Tellers Committee arrived in the office and worked with staff to input paper votes on BigPulse's site and complete the election. We arrived at a final count just before noon, and the Committee members certified that the bylaw change passed, and that Bill Nowlin, Leslie Heaphy, and Tom Hufford were the three candidates elected.

There is a fuller and more formal description of the process at the end of the post.

Feedback and problems with the process

Most members voted without any incident. There was an option to leave a comment after voting, and of the 1366 people who voted, 201 did. These were:

• 118 positive comments. Many were happy that voting was online, some specifically praised the setup.
• 17 negative comments. The biggest complaint, by far, was that the poll required members to vote for all three issues, and to select two directors. Less frequent complaints are listed and detailed below
• 37 neutral or unrelated comments. These ranged from comments on candidates and issues to requests for assistance on issues that had nothing to do with the election.
• 29 "no comment" or similar.
• Outside of the voting process, John Zajc and I both received some emails personally with comments on the process. There were a few comments on BRSP.

 A list of complaints - some from emails, some from the comment form, with thoughts for improvement:

• The biggest complaint - requiring members to vote on everything and choose two directors in the two-director race. We will change both of these next year. Unfortunately the test group of voters that we recruited before the election were drawn from the group of members who wanted to vote on everything, so we didn't catch this problem.
• Several complained that not having candidate bios and/or the description of the bylaw change made the process a guessing game. Those were present, but not everyone found them. They may need to be more visible in the future. The online voting was also online before the election bulletin arrived at members' homes. It would probably be better to wait in the future.
• In a related point, one member asked whether we would have a way for non-computer-users to vote. This comment was left before the bulletin arrived, and the uncertainty it implies is another good argument for not opening online voting until the bulletin is delivered.
• One person complained that the preferential system with numbers was confusing and that check marks should be used instead. This is a change we are unlikely to make, since it would make the election less representative of member wishes.
• One member wished that the candidates were listed in alphabetical order. We intentionally scrambled the names on a per-ballot basis to reduce the chance of alphabetical or positional bias.
• At least one member felt that the final reminder email, which was sent to both people who had not voted and those who already had, was confusing. In the future, emails sent to members who have already voted will be more explicit.
• Several members asked for a way to go back after-the-fact and verify that they had voted, in addition to the online and email receipts. This may be something we can provide a link for in future elections.
• Several voters reported having the voting receipt (which was in HTML form) stripped from the emails they received after voting. This is a pure technical issue with the provider, and I will contact them about getting it resolved.

 Overall, the process went well. Aside from complaints about being required to vote for certain items (a very easy problem to fix next year), there were very few issues, and none of them impeded voting. Many people appreciated being able to vote online, and I don't believe anyone specifically complained that the option was being made available. 

Full Results

The preferential voting system automatically staged multiple "rounds" in which the candidate with the fewest votes was eliminated and his or her votes were redistributed to other candidates according to preference. You can read a full description of the process at the Wikipedia article on preferential voting.

The system created grids in which the rounds progress from left to right (there are two sets of rounds for directors - one for each position). I have copied these grids to a spreadsheet, and you can view them online or download the spreadsheet.

The grids can be confusing, and I'm a little unsure of why it ran eight rounds in the Vice Presidential election, even though Bill Nowlin had a simple majority of the first-preference votes. In the Directors sheet, once the write-ins are eliminated in the first 24 rounds, you can see one candidate being eliminated each round until one candidate receives a majority.

Both versions have the cells for write in candidates and intermediate rounds hidden for the Directors, to make it easier to see the registered candidates (no write-in received more than one first-preference vote). In the Excel version, you have the option of "unhiding" those cells. If you wish to open the full spreadsheet and don't have Excel, OpenOffice can do so competently for free.

• View spreadsheet online.
• Download Excel spreadsheet.

More (formal) details on the process

Finally, a technical description of what took place. What follows below is an exact copy of the text of the official document that the Tellers Committee members signed at the conclusion of the process. It's a bit dry, but this is the whole thing.

Staff set up the online voting system to automatically stop accepting votes at 7am EDT on June 8, 2010.

On March 30, staff sent an email to all members with unique emails on file. Because this was sent before the cut-off date of April 1, it was sent to persons whose 2010 dues had not been received.

In April, the list of voters was checked against the list of members whose 2010 dues had been paid. Those voters who were not in good standing for 2010 were informed that they had until June 7 to renew or not have their vote count.

Staff sent a second email to only members in good standing with unique email addresses who had not voted on May 6.

Staff sent a third email to all members in good standing with unique email addresses on June 7, including those who had already voted

Paper ballots were handled as previous years – name of voter recorded in a spreadsheet and eligibility checked prior to arrival of Tellers Committee.

Also prior to arrival of the Tellers Committee:

• Online voters who were not in good standing had their votes suppressed (14 voters). Paper ballot voters and online voters were cross-referenced. If paper and online ballots existed for the same person, the paper ballot was set aside and only the online ballot counted.
• Staff counted valid paper ballots (those mailed by members who did not vote online); the total was 121. All paper ballots received were from members in good standing.

On June 8, the Tellers Committee convened, and members of the committee opened the paper ballots.

Staff recorded the number of votes cast online, which was 1366.

Paper ballots were inputted into the site manually with at least one Tellers Committee member reviewing the data entry as it happened, and each ballot entered twice to avoid errors.

Before each vote was committed, one Tellers Committee member compared the final on-screen vote to the paper vote.

At the end of the process, staff and Tellers Committee members confirmed that the total vote count matched the sum of the online vote, the number of ballots manually entered, plus the number of incorrectly completed paper ballots. There were 1366 online votes, 114 paper ballots inputted, and 7 incorrectly completed paper ballots. The total number of votes recorded at the end of the process was 1480.

I certify that the above procedure was followed and that the results of the 2010 election appear below:

The bylaw change was approved by a vote of 1,186 (81%) in favor and 270 (19%) against.

Bill Nowlin was elected as Vice President.

Leslie Heaphy and Tom Hufford were elected as Directors.

[signatures follow on original document]