The Miami Beach Democratic Club will be holding elections for Vice President, Secretary, Parliamentarian and Board of Directors Seats #1 and #3 at the end of our General Membership Meeting on Monday, March 15th at 7 PM. This post explains the process for voting in those elections—please be sure to read it all the way through. You must be a dues-paying member of the club in order to vote.

At our February 2021 General Membership Meeting, the following nominations were presented by the Nominating Committee:

• Vice President: Amanda Knapp
• Secretary: Janet Silverman
• Parliamentarian: Jeff Staugler
• BOD #1: Aaron Bos-Lun
• BOD #3: Oliva Fernandez
  

We will continue to take nominations for these positions from the floor of the meeting before voting begins. Candidates will each have two minutes to introduce themselves to the membership. If you are interested in running for these positions or have any questions about what the position entails, please email [email protected].

Because we are still meeting remotely, the meeting will take place over Zoom, and we intend to use ElectionBuddy again like we did for the Board of Directors election held in June 2020 and the Special Election held in September 2020 to conduct the election presuming that more than one candidate is nominated for the position. If only one person is nominated for each position, we will vote on each position by acclamation, but we want you to be prepared to use ElectionBuddy if needed. You must be logged into the Zoom meeting in order to vote in the Special Election (register for the meeting here). ElectionBuddy is a secure voting platform 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.

If we need to use ElectionBuddy, during the meeting each member will receive a link via email to vote for the Board of Directors positions that are contested and will use that link to cast your vote. 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 us with a current or an additional email address for the purposes of voting by emailing us at [email protected]. To prevent ElectionBuddy emails from going to spam, please add [email protected] to your email contacts. If you normally join Zoom meetings with your spouse or partner, you should plan to vote from separate devices.

Presuming that more than one person is nominated to fill a given position, you will receive an email from ElectionBuddy with a link to the ballot to vote. 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 before the meeting on Monday, March 15th from 6-7 pm. Click here to register for this training session. If you are unable to join us during that time, please call or email Matthew Land (850.445.3428, [email protected]) to arrange an alternate time and date.

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected].