Yesterday, the ARRL published the minutes of the March 21, 2015 Executive Committee meeting. The Executive Committee consists of President Kay Craigie, N3KN, in the Chair; First Vice President Rick Roderick, K5UR; Chief Executive Officer and Secretary David Sumner, K1ZZ; and Directors Tom Frenaye, K1KI, Mike Lisenco, N2YBB, Bob Vallio, W6RGG, Dale Williams, WA8EFK, and Dr. David Woolweaver, K5RAV. I found a couple of items of interest:
- In the Chief Executive Officer and Secretary’s report:
[Dave Sumner, K1ZZ] observed that last year’s Ethics & Elections Committee had recommended returning to the paper ballot system for division elections because of the significantly lower rate of participation in elections since electronic voting was introduced in 2012, and that the current plan for this year’s balloting is to follow the committee’s recommendation.
I would have thought that electronic balloting would have increased voter participation, but apparently the membership is so apathetic that electronic voting caused participation to fall.
- In the section FCC/regulatory items, section 4.1.1 reads,
Mr. Imlay led an extensive discussion of perceived inadequacies in the FCC’s enforcement activities. He described a cordial meeting on March 18 with William Davenport, Deputy Chief of the Enforcement Bureau, who offered assurances that Laura Smith will be returning to the Spectrum Enforcement Division to focus on Amateur Radio enforcement following her interim assignment as Acting Northeast Region Counsel. The meeting with Mr. Davenport covered concerns about specific enforcement cases, the Commission’s plans to reduce its field offices and staff, the new Consumer Help Center online complaint procedure and the need to make it more suitable for the filing of Amateur Radio complaints, and the status of the agreement between the ARRL and the FCC that recognizes the ARRL Official Observer program as the “ARRL Amateur Auxiliary to the FCC.” The ARRL’s principal concerns were also shared with the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee and were reflected in questions posed during the Subcommittee’s FCC Oversight hearing on March 19.
Sounds like the budget cuts are really going to hurt enforcement efforts. Remember this next time you jump on the “government is the problem” bandwagon.
- Section 10.1 reads,
Mr. Fenstermaker, as chairman, reported on behalf of the Strategic Planning Working Group, which is meeting regularly by telephone conference and has made initial progress on its assignment. There are plans to seek input from Section Managers and the general ARRL membership.
More information about the Strategic Planning effort can be found on the ARRL website. There’s a form there that allows you to contact this committee with your concerns. I hope they make more of an effort to get input from the membership than this simple form. Without a more concerted effort, the strategic planning project will be pretty much a waste of time. I think the main thing that the strategic plan should address is how the ARRL can increase the percentage of licensed amateurs that are ARRL members and how to involve them in ARRL activities.
So…what do you think?
John Myers says
Hi Dan,
IMHO, part of the issue with the elections was the way the electronic balloting was instituted.
First, every ARRL member who had an e-mail address on file with the was opted-in to electronic balloting. Not everyone remembers to update their ARRL profile when they change e-mail addresses. So, consequently, not everyone was aware of the upcoming elections.
Second, the e-mails that came out last August in advance of the Ohio Section elections, could have easily been overlooked, and/or routed directly into spam folders.
As Ohio ACC, I tried to spread the word at any club meetings I addressed, but that was only a small number.
I’m not saying that some of the electorate is not apathetic; just that I think the electronic balloting could have been done differently.
73, & thanks for all you do for Amateur Radio.
John, KD8MQ