Category: 2021 Election News

Now that the 2021 election is over, we’re happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!

For the 2021 Election, we had 11231 total eligible voters. Of those, 2305 voters cast a ballot, which represents 20.5% of the potential voters.

Our voter turnout is lower than that of last year, which had a turnout of 21.4%.

We also saw a decrease in the number of ballots cast, from 2858 to 2305, which represents a 19.3% decrease.

Elections is committed to continuing to reach out to our eligible members to encourage them to vote in elections. Whoever is elected to the Board of Directors can have an important influence on the long-term health of the OTW’s projects, and we want our members to have a say in that.

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. However, as there were only 4 candidates this year, with two elected and one appointed, revealing that information is unavoidable.

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 2021 Election.

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

E. Anna Szegedi
Kari Dayton

Additionally, the Board of Directors is sorry to announce that director Kati Eggert, who was elected last year, is stepping down from her position on the Board for personal reasons, effective immediately. We are grateful for Kati’s service and thank her for her work and dedication.

To fill the vacant seat, the Board is appointing the candidate who placed third in this election, Antonius Melisse, to join the Board of Directors and serve the remainder of Kati’s term (two years) starting on October 1. This will guarantee that we continue to have a full Board until the next election.

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 OTW member who joined between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021 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. Please note that your donation receipt will be dated in US Eastern Time, so if your donation is listed after 19:59 on June 30, 2021 on the receipt, you won’t be eligible to vote. If you are unsure whether your donation was made before the deadline, please contact our Development and Membership Committee by using the contact form on our website and selecting “Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?”.

The election will run through August 16, 2021, 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 #OTWE2021 to meet and chat with other voters! We’d love to hear from you!

At this time, all members of the OTW who are eligible to vote should have received an email linking to the voting instructions for 2021. 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.

The voting instructions email contains a link to a test version of the ballot. Please follow that link to make sure that the page displays correctly and the candidates are visible. If not, please ensure you are not blocking JavaScript from ajax.googleapis.com, bootstrapcdn.com, and/or opavote.com.

If you are an OTW 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, 2020, and June 30, 2021, inclusive of both dates. Receipts are dated in EDT time zone but the cutoff is in UTC; your receipt may list June 30, 2021 but you won’t be eligible if the donation was after midnight UTC on July 1.
   • 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 your 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?”

The OTW is pleased to announce the following candidates for the 2021 Election (in alphabetical order by given name):

• Antonius Melisse
• E. Anna Szegedi
• Kari Dayton
• Laure Dauban

Because we have 2 seats to be filled and 4 candidates, the 2021 election will be contested – that is, the members of the OTW will vote on which candidates fill the seats. Read More