KPFA Election Results

           This report is a rush job due to an avalanche of pressing matters including preparing an affidavit for Pacifica attorneys in New York who are working to dismiss an injunction against proceeding with the WBAI election, trying to overcome technical difficulties in the KPFK vote counts, answering the never-ending barrage of complaints and inquiries, and tending to many administrative matters.  Therefore, some of the information is presented in approximations rather than exact figures. 

          Under the scrutiny of many observers, several volunteers counted the envelopes to determine that quorum had indeed been reached.  They then proceeded to open the envelopes and sort the contents (ballots, checks, notes and other ephemera).  The envelopes were inspected a second time and produced an additional 15 ballots and a few more donations that had been missed the first time.  
 

          Eighty-one Staff ballots were set aside to be counted later (see Staff report).    
 

          Before the Listener Sponsor vote count proceeded, the National Elections Supervisor was informed that the remedy for an earlier violation of the Fair Campaign Provisions had never been implemented, causing a handicap to some candidates.  A great deal of discussion ensued, with the possibility of delaying the vote count until the remedy was implemented as a very real alternative.  However, given that the level of participation was at the typical response of KPFA listeners, it was agreed that the time had passed for the proposed remedy to have any significant effect.  
 

          Regardless, the decision that the vote count would proceed was based on a promise by the National Elections Supervisor (NES) to grant the promised email access for each of the aggrieved slates to send one message as a post-election communication. 

          The ballots were sealed into clear plastic bins that were signed and stored per Pacifica’s ballot handling procedures.  A remnant of volunteers and observers proceeded to KPFA’s performance studio to continue work.  
 

          Due to poor printing of barcoded personal identification numbers and low resolution scanning, many PINs did not read properly during verification of ballot images.  That necessitated hand-typed data entry of ballot PINs, a process taking about fourteen hours.  
 

          Once that laborious all-night task was complete, tabulation of votes by Choice Plus Pro took literally only a few seconds.  Several rounds of transfers of the excess votes of elected candidates and of the unused votes of eliminated candidates resulted in the 9 listener sponsor seats being filled by the following:
                                      Dianne Enriquez
                                      Sherri Gendelman
                                      Matthew Hallinan
                                      Chandra Hauptman
                                      Warren Mar
                                      Susan McDonough
                                      Richard Phelps
                                      Tracy Rosenberg
                                      Sureya Sadayi

            Shortly after the results were announced, questions arose as to how the image recognition software and the vote tabulating software combined to address the presence of write-ins.  Particularly, it had been observed that in addition to about three dozen miscellaneous write-in names, some voters had written in the names of candidates who were listed on the ballot.   This was a potential problem particularly in the question of who placed 9^th for the last seat filled on the board and who placed 10^th to become alternate in case of a vacancy.  Anecdotal reports of the 10^th place candidate having been written in by several voters gave rise to speculation that the software cheated that candidate out of a seat.  The software treats all write-ins as one amorphous entity and fails to recognize that a ballot-listed candidate who is written in should be awarded the vote as per the voter’s apparent intent.  Additionally, because write-ins are treated cumulatively rather than individually, ballot listed candidates may be eliminated before write-ins who have fewer votes.  

         For now, however, this process is preferable to the corporate-cloning self-appointing boards which preceded our still new attempt at including the membership in the governance process.  We can only hope that a proposal for an elections task force will revisit our methods prior to the 2009 election.  At least we can be pleased that a more rational election timeline has been amended into the Bylaws, allowing for more careful supervision of Pacifica elections.  But that is only one step from the infancy of democratic input into the governance of our foundation.

          At KPFA this underlying power struggle was taken to an extreme with t he last-minute de-recognition of the Unpaid Staff Oganization (UPSO) by the Interim General Manager.  The purpose was apparently to take the power of compiling the list of Unpaid Staff away from the staff themselves and vest it in the hands of management.  Had this been done prior to the start of the qualifying period of June 1 to August 31, the rules that apply at stations without unpaid staff groups would have been activated.  However, the notice came with just three weeks remaining in that three-month period.  This left no time for programmers and other volunteers who thought they had already qualified as staff voters to log in the requisite 30 hours.  So the National Elections Supervisor was left no choice but to insist on keeping the UPSO rule in place that required only 30 hours of work over 12 months.  

           In that intervening month, about sixty more staff members cast valid ballots.  When the votes were counted on December 18, twelve ballots had unverifiable PINs and fifteen had been submitted by email through a third person not authorized to handle ballots.  During the vote count, there were loud and unceasing remonstrations demanding the inclusion of one or the other group of ballots (but never both) to be included.  Regardless of the clamor, the rules were followed and only legitimate ballots were counted.  

CASEY PETERS

National Elections Supervisor

The Pacifica Foundation