Category: 2018 Election News

Now that the 2018 election is over, we’re happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!

For the 2018 Election, we had 5649 total eligible voters. Of those, 827 voters cast a ballot, which represents 14.6% of the potential voters. This is an increase from 12.7% of voters in 2017.

For those who might be interested in the number of votes each candidate received, please note that our election process is designed to elect an equal cohort of Board members in order to allow them to work well together, so we do not release that information. As a general rule, we also won’t disclose which of our unsuccessful candidates received the fewest votes, since we don’t want to discourage them from running again in the future when circumstances and member interest might be different.

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who participated at every stage of the election! We hope to see you at the virtual polls again next year.

The Elections Committee would like to thank all of our candidates for their hard work in this year’s election. With that, we are pleased to present the results of the 2018 Election.

The following candidates (in alphabetical order) have been officially elected to the Board of Directors.

• Lex de Leon
• Natalia Gruber

The new members of the Board will formally begin their term overlap on October 1. We wish them well with their terms.

With that, the election season comes to a close. Thank you to everyone who got involved by spreading the word, asking the candidates questions, and, of course, voting! We look forward to seeing all of you again next year.

The election has opened!

Every member who joined between July 1, 2017, and June 30, 2018, should have a ballot by now. If you didn’t get one, please check your spam folder first, then contact us via our contact form.

The election will run through August 13, 2018, 23:59 UTC; check this time zone converter to find out what time that will be for you.

Once you’ve voted, you can head over to Twitter and use the hashtag #OTWE18 to let us know!

At this time, all eligible OTW members should have received an email linking to the voting instructions for 2018. The subject line was “Voting Instructions for Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board Election”. Please note that anyone who didn’t receive this email is not on the voter rolls this year and will not receive a ballot.

If you are a member and didn’t receive this email, please do the following:

1. Check your spam folder.
• If you use Gmail, check your Social tab.
• If the email is marked as spam, unmark it. Otherwise, you will not receive your ballot, as it will end up in spam as well.
2. If no email is present, open your donation receipt and check the date.
• To vote in this election, your receipt must be dated between July 1, 2017, and June 30, 2018, inclusive of both dates.
• If you paid by check, your membership is measured by the arrival date of the check.
3. If your donation was made during the eligible time period, make sure you checked the box to become a member. Membership is voluntary for those who donate at least $10; only members can vote.
4. If you did become a member, make sure you neither marked any email from the OTW as spam nor opted out of OTW emails or last year’s ballot. If you did so and would like to vote this year, you’ll need to follow step 5 below.
5. If you donated at least $10 during the eligible period and you checked the box to become a member, please fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic “Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?” Make sure to include the email you used when donating.
• Membership has no connection to being a user of AO3 or Fanlore. Please don’t give us your AO3 or Fanlore username – we have no way of knowing who that name belongs to, and we don’t want to know.

Most importantly, if the voting instructions email bounces, gets marked as spam, or you opt out, you will not receive a ballot for this year’s election, and you may not receive a ballot next year. Similarly, if any of those things happened to last year’s election emails, you will not receive a ballot this year. Therefore, if you previously opted out of OTW emails or marked them as spam and would like to vote, fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic “Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?”

Thank you to everyone who submitted questions for our candidates! They have been divided into three sets. The first Q&A set has already been posted on the Elections website, and the next two will be posted July 11 and July 18.

If you missed the Q&A deadline or have any follow-up questions, all the candidates will be available for two live chats. Chats will be held in the Elections Discord server on July 22, 01:00 UTC, and July 28, 20:30 UTC. To find out what times those will be in your location, click the dates to be taken to a time-zone converter.

Please note that though the link to the chat server is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately one hour before the chats begin.

How to Access and Use Discord

Clicking on the above link will take you to the login page. On the login page, you’ll need to provide a screen name.

Once you enter the server, you’ll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose, among other options, whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance.

There are three rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee staffers: general, candidate_chats, and open_chat.

• General is where you’ll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms.
• Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate amongst themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room.
• Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate’s name, and the question. Use o// if it’s a follow-up question to the current discussion.