The Elections Committee has been directed by the OTW’s Board of Directors to post the following text:
“A message from the Board, to avoid any possible confusion regarding the composition of the ballot for the upcoming election: Nikisha Sanders is no longer running for a seat on the Board, because she is not eligible to run under the OTW’s Elections Eligibility Requirements. These Requirements, which were adopted by the Board in August, 2014, specify that in order to be eligible to run for a seat on the Board, a candidate must be a current staffer on a standing committee of the OTW. Sanders’ staff role on the Development and Membership committee was “ex officio,” that is, she held that position by virtue of her position as Treasurer. Sanders’ September 11, 2015 resignation from the office of Treasurer required her automatic removal from any positions that she held solely by virtue of being Treasurer, including her role on the Development and Membership Committee. As a result of her resignation, therefore, Sanders is no longer a staffer on a standing committee of the OTW, and is not eligible to continue to run for a Board seat in the present election. As we said when she resigned earlier this month, we are immensely grateful for the dedication Sanders brought to her years of work for the OTW as Treasurer and as a member of the Board of Directors from 2011-14, and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors.”
Any comments will be submitted to the Board for response, as the Elections Commitee is not allowed to discuss the topic on this site without the approval of the Board and the Legal Committee.
Was Sanders notified of this by the Board? Also, why did the Board wait until after the elections process began to do this? Shouldn’t this have been determined prior to the start of the campaign?
This seems very problematic to me. I understand that the Treasurer can be an ex officio position (necessary to ensure the presence of someone with financial training). However, in the past the Treasurer has fulfilled duties to, e.g. DevMem and other committees without being on those committees. As such, I would expect serving on a committee to be classed as a normal staff position. Was the ex officio nature of that position made clear to sanders and the committee chairs at the time of her appointment to DevMem?
I understand the reason for moderating comments on this post, but I hope that Board will gather up the questions submitted here and answer them fully and honestly. At this point, I have significant concerns about the functioning of the org and its ability to be both fair and transparent.
Hi Zooey,
I’m sorry that I can’t answer your other questions, but I can say that the comment moderation is solely to prevent spam. At this time, the Elections Committee has control over our site and how commenting works here. We received over 80 spam comments on a previous post and had to turn on moderation to allow us to delete those so they wouldn’t hide the real comments. I am even now deleting spam from the queue for this post.
I’m so sorry for the inconvenience!
Best wishes,
briar_pipe
Elections Committee Chair
Confirming the spam problem. I was the person who reported the more than 80 spam comments to the last post.
Thanks for the clarification – I misunderstood the last line of the post as meaning that the moderation was taking place to allow comments to be submitted to Board for response. I see now that you just mean the Board are /answering/, not also determining whether comments appear.
If the goal was to reduce confusion, then this communication has not done it for me. I cannot understand how/why a candidate was removed after the elections process began since the reason given for removal is one that existed *before* the election process was underway. Sanders resigned on September 10, and candidates were announced on September 14. If the reason for removal was one that arose after the election process started (such as learning the candidate had withdrawn, or was deceased), then removal during the process would make sense to me.