The Miami Beach Democratic Club will be holding elections for seven spots on our executive board during our meeting on Monday, June 22 at 7 pm. This post explains the process for voting in those elections—please be sure to read it all the way through. If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected].
Because we are still meeting remotely to help contain the spread of COVID-19, the meeting will take place over Zoom, and we will be using a service called ElectionBuddy to tabulate votes. You must be logged into the Zoom meeting in order to vote in board elections, and the meeting will only be open to members who are eligible to vote in the elections. ElectionBuddy is a secure voting platform used by groups such as the Utah Democratic Party to conduct remote voting, and ensures the integrity and anonymity of our board elections. You do not need an ElectionBuddy account in order to vote in the election—we will provide you with login credentials.
During the meeting, each member will need to be able to log in to ElectionBuddy using a computer, tablet, or smartphone. You will receive a link via email to vote for each office with more than one candidate (those with only one candidate can be approved by a voice vote). You will use those links to cast your vote for each office. This means that we need to have a unique email address for each of our members. If you normally share an email address with your partner or spouse and you are both members, please provide our secretary, Ileana Oroza ([email protected]), with an additional email address for the purposes of voting. To prevent ElectionBuddy emails from going to spam, please add [email protected] to your email contacts.
The morning of Monday, June 22, you will receive an email at the address we have on file. The email will contain your ElectionBuddy password. You should practice logging in to ElectionBuddy on the computer or device you plan to use for voting, and contact Dan Royles (619-370-1678, [email protected]) to let us know if you encounter any issues. [UPDATE 6/21/2020: The email that you receive with a link to your ballot will include an access key and password that you will use to log in, and we will do a practice vote at the beginning of the meeting using ElectionBuddy. For these reasons, we will not need to send our ElectionBuddy login credentials before the meeting.] If you normally join Zoom meetings with your spouse or partner, you should plan to vote from separate devices.
During the meeting, you will receive an email from ElectionBuddy with a link to the ballot each time we vote for an office with more than one candidate. Either click on the link in the email or copy the link and paste it into your browser's address bar. This will take you to the ballot. Select the candidate you wish to vote for and click “Verify Your Selection.” This will take you to a confirmation page. Check that your ballot is filled out the way you want and click "Submit" to send your ballot to ElectionBuddy to be counted. You should see a "Thank you!" message appear on the confirmation page. Again, you must be logged into the Zoom meeting in order to vote in board elections.
If you would like to preview ElectionBuddy, we will conduct practice voting on the afternoon of Friday, June 19 from 3–5 pm. If you are unable to join us during that time, please call or email Dan Royles (619-370-1678, [email protected]) to arrange an alternate time and date.
At the end of our May 2020 membership meeting, the following members had been nominated for board positions:
- President: Matthew Land, Ariel Morel
- Vice President: Mike Caffey
- Secretary: Victoria Villamil
- Treasurer: Patrick Breshike
- Parliamentarian: Richard Kastle
- Director #2: Janis Good
- Director #4: Tim Johnson
We will also take nominations for each of these positions from the floor of the meeting. Candidates will each have two minutes to introduce themselves to the membership; those who run for more than one office will be allowed to introduce themselves once.
We're very happy to be holding these elections, which were originally scheduled for our March meeting but were delayed due to covid-19. If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected].