This FAQ is designed for people who are considering becoming a candidate for the Board of Directors of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), and for members who want to understand how the organization’s elections will be run. It describes the requirements for candidates, the election process, and sources for additional information. Following the Election Timeline, the FAQ will be provided to all eligible candidates in advance of the election, as well as being publicly available at all times.

The only elected position in the OTW is membership in the Board of Directors. All members of the Board are elected by the paying members of the OTW in annual elections. Since the term of service is three years, 1/3 of the board’s seats are up for election in any given year. Candidates do not run for specific seats (see "Do specific seats have specific requirements?"). Instead, the entire pool of candidates is competing for the entire group of open seats, and the top vote-getters out of all the candidates will occupy those seats. For a more in-depth explanation of the voting method, see "How will the votes be counted?".

We’ll start answering this by discussing what the Board as a whole does, and then what its individual members are responsible for.

Collectively, the Board:

• Does strategic planning and decision-making in areas which include OTW’s mission, annual budget, projects, and priorities.
• Maintains long-term focus without getting too caught up in day-to-day running of OTW (as that is the job of the Committee Chairs and the Volunteers).
• Monitors the organization’s progress towards strategic goals. Adjusts resources and goals accordingly.
• Complies with legal frameworks. Establishes policies and procedures to ensure that the organization also complies.
• (Optionally) delegates some powers, while remaining ultimately responsible for the resulting actions.
• Meets regularly to do above. Currently meets weekly on Campfire.

Individual members of the Board:

• Attend Board meetings weekly on Campfire (each meeting less than 2 hours’ duration)
• Must be up to speed with relevant communication and reports before each Board meeting.
• Act in good faith, in the best interests of OTW, as detailed in our Conflicts of Interest policy statement.

Most Board members also chair an OTW Committee, or are the Board liaison to a Committee. Committee chairs or liaisons report to the Board before or between meetings, and communicate any relevant Board decisions to their Committees. In total, members of the Board often spend 10-15 hours per week on work for the organization, and a Board role can easily amount to a part-time position.

To be eligible as a candidate, you must:

• Be a paying member of OTW by eight weeks before the election.
• Be at least 18 years old at the time of the election.
• Have served on a standing committee for a total of at least one year in the two years prior to the election. A year of committee service is required, but you may have taken a hiatus during or after the service, so long as the final hiatus did not begin more than a year before the election. You must have served as a full committee member. Non-overlapping service in multiple committees that amounted to a year in total is also possible: e.g., you might have served four months on one committee, and then eight months on another, as long as those terms of service had not been concurrent. Members of the Elections Committee must resign from the committee prior to declaring candidacy.
• Be willing to provide a brief public statement summarizing your philosophy, goals for the organization, and view on future directions for the organization, etc.
• Run under your legal name.

The OTW was formed with specific goals in mind: to build an archive and a wiki, to publish a journal, and to provide legal assistance. We want to elect people to the Board who have experience with those projects, and who are familiar with the internal workings of the committees and with their fellow staffers.

That said, familiarity is not the same as approval! We encourage members who have different opinions and visions to serve on committees and to run for the board. We value the diversity of viewpoints within the membership. But in the end, the OTW’s goal is not to simply to reflect a cross-section of all fannish opinions, but to further the projects we have undertaken. Our election policies are designed to foster candidates who will be able to do just that.

More information about how to join a committee is available at "How can I become a committee member?".

All Board members must serve under their legal names due to IRS regulations for incorporated nonprofit organizations. We ask that candidates conduct their campaigns under their legal names to ensure that the organization does not set a precedent of connecting its members’ legal and fannish names, for any reason.

Before becoming a candidate, you must have paid for a year’s membership in OTW with a PayPal account, credit card, or check bearing your legal name. The Financial Committee will verify this for the Elections Committee Chair.

If you have been serving as a member of a committee under your fannish identity, the Volunteers Committee will need to know the link between your real name and fannish identity in order to confirm for the Elections Committee Chair that you are qualified to run. This information will not be shared, and we will never connect your real name and fannish identity unless you specifically choose to do so.

One option available to you is to ask the Volunteers Committee to switch you over to working under your legal name within OTW a few months before the election. This will allow you to cite your committee experience without making the connection between your fannish identity and real name obvious to those outside your committee.

How you conduct your campaign is up to you. You will not be required to reveal your pseudonym, and the committee chairs will gladly work with you to help separate your fannish and RL biographies (see How do I declare candidacy?).

If you choose to make the connection yourself, be aware that it will link your name and your pseudonym in the minds of the membership, and possibly in the world at large.

No. There is no specific election for the Board role of Treasurer, for example. The elected Board members will choose their own Chair, Treasurer, etc. from among their own number, and appoint those organization members as committee chairs (whether these are Board members, or not) whom they judge to have the best qualifications for a particular committee role.

Sure!

• Ten weeks before the election: The Elections Committee issues a public call for candidates. The Board will hold a chat on or near this date, to answer questions from any members who are considering running for election.
• Eight weeks before the election: Deadline to declare candidacy and submit initial ID verification (a paid membership, as described above). Campaigning also commences at this time.
• One month before the election: Deadline to become a paid member, for the purposes of voting in this election, and for candidates to provide an official statement.
• Two weeks before the election: Deadline to declare proxy vote transfers.
• Election day! Campaigning may run through to the close of polls.

Each year, the Elections Committee will publish a more detailed version of this timeline that includes the specific dates for that year.

You MUST declare candidacy, including verifying your legal name by becoming a paying OTW member, by eight weeks before the election. The only exception is for elections that don’t attract a sufficient number of candidates at eight weeks before the election (see below).

You must provide an official campaign statement at least one month prior to the election.

Send your declaration to the Elections chair. Please include a statement that you are over 18, the committee(s) that you served a total of at least one year on, and your legal name. If you have been serving on that committee under a pseudonym (for example, you did not switch over your name on the committee a few months in advance, as suggested in "Will my real name and fannish identity be connected?"), the chair of Elections will confirm with the chair of Volunteers that you did, in fact, serve for one year on that committee, and will confirm with the chair of Financial that you are a paid member. The chairs will hold your fannish pseudonym in confidence, and not make any connection between your real name and your pseudonym.

If there is only one candidate per open seat (or fewer) by the eight weeks’ deadline, then the deadline will be extended by two weeks. Six weeks before the election is the absolute final date to declare candidacy, even if we have no more candidates than there are seats. If by the six week deadline, the number of declared candidates is still exactly equal to the number of open seats, then no election will be held: those declared candidates will fill the open Board seats.

If there are fewer declared candidates than open seats by the eight weeks’ deadline (e.g., two declared candidates for three open Board seats), then the deadline for declaring a candidacy will be extended by two weeks. The Elections Committee will make efforts to encourage possible candidates to run. If a seat still has no candidates six weeks before the election, the Board may appoint members (even if they have less than a year’s committee service) for seats that cannot be filled in any other way. As with an uncontested election, no election will be held in these circumstances.

This provision allows Board members to reach outside the pool of eligible candidates (if no candidates come forward from that group) to appoint members who have been active as volunteers or who have served on a committee for less than one year.

Yes! However, in order to vote, they MUST be paying members of OTW. Moreover, they must be verified paying members by a month before the election.

Once the format of ballots has been set up by the third party polling service we’re hiring to do this ballot, we will link to a sample ballot and instructions in this space.

(a) Eligible voters—all paid members in good standing—will be assigned a login name by the Elections Committee. You will use this name to log in, once only, to the voting site. A password for each login name will be generated randomly and that information (the login name and password) will be sent to the e-mail address you used to join the organization. Only the Elections Committee has access to the list of login names, and they will not see the vote tallies in any format where the login names are linked to votes: no one will know how you voted.

(b) You may, by assigning it beforehand, have another member vote as your proxy. See the section on proxies below for more details.

The votes will be counted by cumulative voting. Cumulative voting is a voting system that is most commonly used for corporate board elections (for which it is mandated in many states) and for many city councils and school boards. Its advantage in an election with multiple open seats is that it allows voters to choose between distributing their votes between their preferred candidates or concentrating their votes on one specific candidate. As a result, smaller interest groups are more likely to gain some representation on the Board, while candidates with broader support will still receive most of the seats.

The voting takes place as follows. Each voter has a number of votes equal to the number of open seats. (That is, if two seats are open, each voter has two votes.) Voters may allot those votes however they wish: all to one candidate, or divided between multiple candidates. At the end of the voting period, the candidates who received the most votes win.

For example: Suppose that there are two open seats on the Board one year, and four people (A,B,C,D) running for those seats.

• The candidates don't run for a specific seat. "Two open seats" just means that the top two candidates will both win.
• As a voter, I will have two votes, because there are two open seats. (If there were three open seats, I would have three votes.)
• If I like Candidates A and B best out of the candidates, I can give one vote to each of them.
• Alternately, if I really want Candidate C to win, and I don't care who has the other seat, then I can give both my votes to C.
• At the end of the voting period, a third party polling service will tally the total number of votes given to each candidate.
• The top two vote-getters are the winners. Both of them will be new members of the Board.

Live e-mail support will be provided throughout the voting period. If you have a difficulties casting a vote, or problem that may require you to recast a vote, let the Elections support team know before the polls close by sending a message to Elections.

Full results will be posted after the polls close: barring unforeseen and catastrophic software failure, we will announce results no later than three days after the end of balloting, and very likely much sooner!

If results are delayed into a second or third day, Elections will post updates on the cause of the delay and the status of our count.

In case of a tie, a runoff election will be held. The runoff will generally take place two weeks after the election, but the date may shift to accommodate holidays or other special events; in any case, the runoff date will be on the election timeline distributed in advance of the election.

In case of a tie in the runoff, another runoff will be held, but in no case will the rollover date (when Board members’ terms end) be changed. If necessary, rollover will take place with empty seats, which will be filled once the runoffs have produced a winner.

Yes, whether you win or lose. There are no term limits for Board members.

Candidates can start campaigning at the end of the declaration period, 8 weeks before the election. The campaign period extends until the close of polls.

Candidates are required to provide a brief public statement summarizing their philosophy, goals for the organization and their view on future directions for the organization etc.

Candidates are also encouraged (but not required) to participate in a public chat at a mutually agreed time of their own choosing. If the candidates cannot agree upon a time, the Elections Committee will decide on an appropriate time.

Candidates’ official campaign statements will be posted by Elections on the organization’s website and in a variety of other spaces (e.g., the OTW News on IJ and LJ, twitter, the Yahoo! group and other outlets regularly used by Communications) and their statements can include an advertisement for their own campaign website or community. A chat forum will also be provided for the public chat (see "Are there any official campaign activities?").

Candidates are also encouraged to campaign in other forums.

Candidates are not allowed to:

• Offer an incentive for a vote (whether monetary or another sort of consideration, including fannish creative works).
• Have access to the voters’ roll, in order to protect the legal identity of members.
• Out another candidate’s pseudonym, or link the legal and fannish names of any OTW member who has not chosen to make that connection public.

These tactics will be grounds for disqualification from candidacy.

However, there are no restrictions on:

• The number of friends who may campaign on your behalf.
• The value of donations of money or labor you can receive for the purpose of campaigning.
• The formation of coalitions between candidates.
• The use of closed discussion forums.

If it is proven to the satisfaction of the Elections Committee and the Board that a candidate offered an incentive for a vote, then the candidate will be disqualified from running or voting in that election.

If the person offering the incentive is not a candidate, she or he will be disqualified as a voter for that election.

Donating (e.g., purchasing a membership) under a fraudulent name to a nonprofit organization is not merely against organization rules, but illegal, and grounds for immediate removal from the Board.

Only candidates may request a recount or revote. Any candidate who wishes to do so should send her or his request (with an explanation as to why she or he thinks that a recount or revote is necessary) to the Elections chair within a week of the close of the polls; the Elections Committee will make a ruling within a week of receiving such a request. If a revote is deemed necessary, it will begin within two weeks of said ruling.

Voting by proxy is a way for you to designate someone else to cast your vote in an election. OTW is required to allow proxy-voting by Delaware law, which specifies: “A stockholder may authorize another person or persons to act for such stockholder as proxy by transmitting or authorizing the transmission of [an] electronic transmission to the person who will be the holder of the proxy.” In corporate elections, a proxy is usually used when a voting member/shareholder can’t attend a meeting in person. Extended, electronic ballots such as those used by the OTW should make proxy voting unnecessary in most cases. Nevertheless, we are still required by Delaware law to allow proxy voting.

With extended, electronic voting, most of the normal reasons for voting by proxy (for example, you can’t attend an “in person” meeting to vote) do not apply. However, if you want to give your information to someone else to vote for you, then send a proxy statement to the Elections chair so we know you’re doing it. Otherwise, if you get in a dispute with the person you gave your information to, we have no way to know what’s going on, and we have to go with the first vote we get.

Proxies are assigned by e-mail. Your e-mailed proxy request must:

• Originate from the e-mail account you’ve registered with OTW.
• Be addressed to both elections-chair@transformativeworks.org AND your proxy.
• Include your legal name.
• Include a declaration that you wish to assign your proxy to the e-mailed recipient.
• Your proxy must reply to this e-mail, acknowledging receipt, and include his/her legal name in the reply. This reply must be received by elections-chair@transformativeworks.org at least two weeks before the Election day.

Reminder: The OTW will never link your fannish ID with your legal name unless you choose to do so yourself, nor will we publicly post the list of paying members. If you wish to firmly maintain this separation of fandom and RL identities, we suggest that you use a non-fannish e-mail address to join the organization. If you use a non-fannish email address to join, then even though you have given us your real name when you joined and donated, it would not be possible to establish a link between that name and your fannish ID.

In general, a proxy can have any conditions a person wants, but only as a contract between the member and her proxy. OTW is not responsible for enforcing any conditions. If the proxy holder votes contrary to your specifications, we will have to follow the proxy, and indeed we won’t even know whether the proxy voter did follow your intentions, since that person will be casting a secret vote (and not even the Elections Committee members will be able to know how a particular person voted).

No. Elections can verify that we have successfully reassigned your vote, but we cannot verify whether or not your proxy used the vote, or show which candidates she voted for. Because of this, we strongly suggest that you confirm that your proxy received your assignment request and knows your voting preferences.

You may assign a proxy up to two weeks before a given election; the official date will be included on the election timeline for that year. Your proxy assignment will last for six months. Until those six months are up, we cannot revoke or change your proxy assignment. This means that, should there be a run-off for the election, your proxy must also vote for you in the run-off.

PINs for an upcoming election will be e-mailed about one week after the deadline for proxy assignments. At that point, if you have been assigned a proxy vote, you will be e-mailed that PIN in addition to your own PIN (if applicable), and you may vote each PIN, one at a time.

No. You may not reassign proxy votes that you have received.

Between nine and ten weeks before the election, there will be a public chat, hosted by the Election Committee and the Board, for any members interested in running for the Board of Directors. The date, time, and location of this chat will be announced in advance to all committee members and staffers. Members of the Board and Elections Committee will be available to answer questions. Afterwards, a transcript of the chat will be publicly available online.

If you have questions that are not answered here or in the public chat, you can contact the Chair of the Elections Committee.