OTW Election Statistics for 2024

Now that the 2024 election is over, we’re happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!

For the 2024 Election, we had 14959 total eligible voters. Of those, 3415 voters cast a ballot, which represents 22.8% of the potential voters.

Our voter turnout is lower than that of last year, which had a turnout of 27.8%

We also saw a decrease in the number of ballots cast, from 4247 to 3415, which represents a -19.6% 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. 

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.

2024 OTW Election Results

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 2024 Election.

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

  • Erica Frank
  • Rachel Linton

Board turnover will formally begin on October 1. We wish the new members of the Board 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.

2024 OTW Board Voting Now Open!

OTW Elections News

The election has opened!

Every OTW member who joined between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024 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, 2024 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 19, 2024, 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/X and use the hashtag #OTWE2024 to meet and chat with other voters! We’d love to hear from you!


OTW Members – Check Your Email for Voting Instructions

OTW Elections News

At this time, all members of the OTW who are eligible to vote should have received an email linking to the voting instructions for 2024. 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 and/or bootstrapcdn.com. Read More

2024 Candidate Q&A and Chat Round Up

The Election season is in full swing! Live chat with candidates is coming up soon. You can find links to the candidates’ answers to your questions at the bottom of this post.

Live Chat

There will be one live chat session with all four candidates lasting ninety minutes. Chat will take place in our public chatroom.
It is scheduled for:

The chat will provide attendees the opportunity to ask the candidates questions not already covered in their platforms, bios, and Q&A, as well as to ask individual questions of specific candidates. New questions will only be accepted during the first hour of the scheduled chat time to make sure candidates have time to appropriately address them all.

Please note that though the link to the public chatroom is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chat is scheduled to begin.

Read on to learn more about using Discord.

  • 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 whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance, among other options.
  • There will be four rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee volunteers: general, candidate_chats, open_chat and questions.
    • 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 among 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.
    • Questions is where the moderator will compile a list of all questions. Only moderators will be able to chat in this room.

Q&A

When we posted the Board candidates’ bios and platforms, we asked the public to submit additional questions for them. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone who did so! We will be posting groups of questions as the candidates finish their responses.

To navigate answers by individual candidate, please use the links below:

The following is a list of the topics covered by the questions. Clicking on a topic will take you to the tag containing all the candidates’ corresponding answers.

To read all the posts regarding Q&A, simply select the 2024 Q&A tag.

2024 OTW Elections Candidates Announcement

Candidates Announcement

The Organization for Transformative Works is pleased to announce the following candidates for the 2024 Election (in alphabetical order by given name):

  • C. Ryan S.
  • Erica F.
  • Rachel L.
  • Tish S.

Because we have 2 seats to be filled and 4 candidates, the 2024 election will be contested – that is, the members of the OTW will vote on which candidates fill the seats.

The Elections Committee is excited to introduce the candidates to all of the members of the OTW! Included in this post are links to short Bios and Platforms written by the candidates. This post also marks the beginning of our Q&A period, during which we invite the public to submit questions for the candidates. Additionally, we will be holding a series of live chats – dates and times for those are to be announced based on candidate availability. Information on the voting period and how to vote will also be posted shortly.

In the meantime, there is a timeline of Elections events available here for your reference. Read on to learn more about our candidates and how you can submit questions for them!

Platforms and Bios

We asked each candidate to provide us with a Bio that sums up their professional and fannish experience, as well as to write a Platform about their goals for their term on the Board by answering the following questions:

  • Why did you decide to run for election to the Board?
  • What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board?
  • Choose one or two goals for the OTW that are important to you and that you would be interested in working on during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?
  • What is your experience with the OTW’s projects and how would you collaborate with the relevant committees to support and strengthen them? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.
  • How would you balance your Board work with other roles in the OTW, or how do you plan to hand over your current roles to focus on Board work?

You can read both the candidates’ answers to these questions and their bios by following the links below.

Question & Answer (Q&A)

To better accommodate the time constraints of the election and the workload for candidates, this year we are introducing two changes to the Q&A rules: One question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded. Limit of three questions per person.

Candidates will also answer questions from the public. Anyone may submit questions via the Elections form. Please submit all questions by 11:59pm UTC on June 30 (what time is that where I live?). All candidates will answer each question submitted, subject to the following restrictions:

  • Questions must be a maximum of 50 words long.
  • Any submitted questions repeating what is already addressed on Platforms will be ignored. This is to allow candidates to dedicate more time to answering new questions.
  • Similar questions will be grouped together to avoid candidates giving repetative answers. Elections volunteers will decide which questions are similar enough to group.
  • If you have a follow-up to a Platform question, please specifically mention it is a follow-up so Elections volunteers know not to treat it as a repeat.
  • One question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded.
  • Maximum of three questions per person.

The posting date for answers will be chosen depending on the number of questions received. Posts will be spread out, arranged by topic, to make it easier for voters to read all the answers.