The following is an observation and not a swipe at the process. As I understand the current process, the regional seats are filled first before the open seats are filled.
We have 4 excellent candidates running for 3 seats on the PASS BoD this year. One seat is earmarked for EMEA; one is for US/Canada; and one is open. We have 1 candidate that qualifies for the EMEA seat - Jen Stirrup. This means that Jen will be re-elected. The remaining three candidates are all eligible for the other two seats - one US/Canada and one Open.
When you cast your vote, there are three main scenarios as I see it:
- Scenario 1: Don't vote for Jen and cast three votes for the other candidates. This effectively means that you voted but really did not vote. BTW, I am not advocating that you don't vote for Jen - this is an observation on the situation and no endorsement is put forth here.
- Scenario 2: You vote for Jen and you need to pick 1 or 2 of the others - OR - you don't vote for Jen and cast only two votes for the other candidates. This will at least make your vote impact the results in some aspect. Again, there is no advocacy here to support or not support any particular candidate.
- Scenario 3: You only cast a vote for the ONE candidate that you feel most strongly about. Perhaps this magnifies your vote the most. Again, I am just illustrating how you vote impacts the results.
As an aside, you can't vote more than once for a particular candidate; in other words you can't cast all three of your votes for Candidate A. At this point, I am unsure of what I am going to do. But I will vote. I hope that this blog post will make you do some additional research on the candidates before deciding how to cast your vote. I'm sure that all of these candidates want to make sure that you have an informed opinion when you cast your vote.
Go Research and then Go Vote!