Preliminaries:
- Before Fall Elections: Fall Elections are held only to fill vacancies. In October, check with the currently elected officers to find out if they want to automatically renew their position. If any don't, you'll need to hold an election.
- Before Spring Elections: Spring Elections are held for all positions.
- Other Elections: Elections outside of spring and fall elections are held only for vacancies. They should be held within 4 weeks of the vacancy.
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- Spring elections are constitutionally held 4-8 weeks prior to the start of office. This generally turns to mean that they should be held between mid March and mid April. Avoid scheduling them over MIT's spring break.
- Fall elections should be held sometime between the end of October and the end of November.
- Vacancy elections need to be held within 4 weeks of the vacancy, but the club meeting needs 2 weeks notice, so scheduling is already somewhat restricted.
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Getting Candidates:
While nominations can technically be done at the election, this should be discouraged. It's better for everyone if candidates have had a chance to decide if they're interested and find out more about the position beforehand. Also, you'll want to have a good slate of candidates, so you'll want to know ahead of time who's running , so that other people can decide if they are running, and so you can know if you need to recruit more vigorously for any positions. Anyone interested in a position should speak to you or another officer. you can recruit for positions without any interest.
There are a couple ways of getting good candidates: Volunteers and Recruits. Both of these are good options, and you'll probably need both.
Getting candidates who you weren't aware of or who aren't already involved in Tech Squares is a good way to get different viewpoints on the EC. In the same email that announces the club meeting (or an earlier one), you should explain what positions are available and what they entail and encourage people to talk to you or another officer if they are interested. It's also nice to have a way for people to point out others who might be good at the job. (As of Spring 2015, we tried doing this on a google spreadsheet the way ESP does, with limited success.) Getting nominations - You should advertise what the positions are and how much work they are. The more of a description you can give people people the more likely they are to choose a position appropriately. In addition to announcements, you and other officers may need to recruit for officers in person. At Elections.
Recruiting candidates. One source of candidates is people who currently are involved in Tech Squares and hold the positions. If someone wants to continue with their job and they are doing it well, you probably won't need to recruit for that position. However, for other positions, you may need to recruit. When recruiting, try to get people who show interest in being involved, but aren't currently very involved. Also, given that we need 50% students on the EC, consider students. Consider going through the attendance sheets or the voting member list and noting people who'd make good officers. Then, talk to these people and encourage them to run. Also talk to other officers; they might know of people who are getting more involved that you don't know about.
If you have positions with no (good, qualified) candidates even after recruiting, you may need to consider people who are already heavily involved or who have held offices in the past. These people are a second choice to getting new people involved, but it's important to have offices filled. Often you'll be able to find someone who will run if no one else is running. For the sake of continuity, it's good to have at least a couple of the officers have been officers before - the Vice Positions are suited for this. Also, if the named officers are all new or students, experienced officers can be encouraged to run for Member at Large.
At elections:
For each position, someone (probably the current position holder) should describe the position. Then, all nominations should be announced (including anyone has has already been nominated and declined). At this point, if there are new nominations, they are allowed. Then each candidate should have time to state their platform, and members should have a chance to ask questions.
Even in uncontested elections, you should still kick the candidates out of the room so that club members can say in closed meeting any concerns they wish to express. Then hold a vote (see the Standing Policies for how votes are conducted).
After a candidate has one, the candidates are allowed back in the room and the process is repeated for the next position.
After Elections:
The results should be announced to the club.
New officers should be added to the mailing list and given other access priveleges. This is the time to think about those people who
have shown a willingness to help and offered intelligent advice/opinions. We prefer students who already dance with us regularly. As a courtesy, it’s nice to ask the current elected officers if they are interested in holding the office another year. The exception to this are officers who have held the same office for two consecutive years, or held any set of offices for three consecutive years. These officers should be encouraged to take a break for at least a year. Concurrently, you should announce to the club that elections are less than six weeks away and the officers are looking for people interested in running for office. The number of people who respond to a general announcement like this tends to be small, but it starts people talking and thinking about running for office. At this point, club members may step forward and express interest in running or at least want to know more what is involved in holding a specific office. You should be encouraging! Have the current officer talk to them, point them to the officer descriptions on our web site, and offer to answer any questions or concerns they may have. Often this does not happen for every position, so it’s up to the officers to seek out interested members. Our current approach for identifying potential candidates is rather informal. Usually the officers sit down with the Fall attendance sheet and consider each person. The officers are discouraged from considering the very recently graduated Fall Class. In a pinch, however, many of them have made fine, if inexperienced, officers. Once you have a list of potential candidates, as well as possibly offices you think they might be suited for, people should be assigned to talk to each potential candidate to assess their interest. And gradually a slate of interested candidates will form. 11 revised 15 May 2005 6.2 Choose the Election Date Ideally, one or two of the candidates will have previously been officers. This is good for continuity but is not essential. A week or so before the elections you should post the list of people interested in running to the club email list. In this email you should remind everyone that nominations officially happen on election night and at that time, any club member may be nominated and, yes, you may nominate yourself. 6.2 Choose the Election Date The date should be as close as possible to two months before the new officers will take office (Bylaws, Art IX, Sec 1). This probably means mid-March sometime. Although it might be tempting to have elections coincide with an MIT vacation, so as to not interfere with the class teaching, we don’t do it because too many students travel during breaks. Remember that you must announce the date at least two weeks in advance of the actual meeting just like any regular club meeting. And announcing it earlier is even better. 6.3 Election Night Election Night is both an exciting and hectic night. We want the election process to be fair and to allow enough time for discussions, however, we don’t want to detract too much from the on-going class. This is officially a club meeting, but we try to not have any other club business to address during this meeting in order to keep it as short as possible. The membership will want to spend some of their night dancing. Since this is a class night, you are encouraged to hold the meeting out in the hall or other space, so the class can continue to learn during the meeting, albeit without angels. Since the class members are not yet club members, they do not need to participate in the meeting. For details of how to actually run an election, please see the document named How to Run an Election at Tech Squares. It can be found on the club’s web site, http://www.mit.edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/activities/tech-squares/howto/.