One of the blog posts I’ve been anticipating for awhile has finally come to pass. Oleg Kagan released the results of his ALA non-voter election survey this week; the purpose of this exercise was to investigate as to why there is a low turnout in ALA elections. It’s a long post but I enjoyed Oleg’s insights and the yeoman’s work he put into arranging the data and writing up an analysis.
One of the bigger discoveries to emerge from the survey is that of the unfamiliarity of the candidates inhibiting people from voting. To be more specific, non-voters felt that it was hard to get an idea of what the candidates stood for, the difference between positions from their statements (which some judged as “worthless”), and that the sheer number of candidates made it hard to figure out who might be the best candidate for people to choose. Or, in my opinion, they got walloped with information overload. (There is some irony to this.)
Since reading Oleg’s analysis (which if you haven’t done yet, you should do now; I’ll wait), I’ve been thinking about how to condense and present the ballot so that people can be able to make judgments on a hierarchy of information points. (Brief aside: I have no idea what the voting interface looks like; I’m just imagining how a sample ballot or election page might look.)
Here’s what I would suggest:
[Name]
[Memberships][Committees]
[Priority Issues, numbered #1 through #5]
[One line personal statement which links to personal statement that has both a short ~200 word position paragraph and a longer unlimited word statement]
So it would look like this:
Andy Woodworth
PLA, LITA, RUSA, YALSA, AASL. Chair, Volcano Worshipper’s Roundtable.
Priority issues: Advocacy, Organizational Transparency, eBook/eContent, Small Libraries, MLS accreditation
“I believe public libraries change people’s lives everyday”
(embedded link to short and longer statements)
My thinking approach in presenting it this way is to put association involvement first and foremost to give people an idea if the person is doing anything in the organization. I would imagine that, in electing counselors, some display of experience or commitment might be seen as a desirable quality.
As to the inclusion of ranking priority issues, this could originate from either a predetermined master list of issues that ALA creates or given over to the candidates to formulate for themselves. It would force the candidates to prioritize their issues in a way in which that people could draw differences between them at a glance. As a voter, if you are looking for someone who make certain issues a priority, this would allow you to cut to the chase in terms of offering support for certain candidates. It’s another way of pulling out differences from the candidates and possibly allow for voters to examine similar groups of candidates on a spreadsheet more easily.
With the one line personal statement linking to the longer ones, it allows voters who want more information to seek it out. By including a 200 word personal statement, it gives a sample of what they stand for and their reasoning. The candidates can use the unlimited statement space to make any and all points, plans, or promises that they are willing to offer voters.
I know there are other ideas zipping around about how to address the non-voting issue so I hope this adds to the conversation. I hope that this suggestion can be put to use by the membership in order to make the voting process a bit more friendly by allowing people to base their decision on an ever increasing amount of information offered.
If you have other ideas for how to make the ballot better, comment away!
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