Now that the 2016 Election is over and the results are final, we’re happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!
For the 2016 Election, we had 6,302 total eligible voters. Of those, 951 voters cast a ballot, which represents 15.1% of the potential voters. We’re proud to say that our voter turnout is nearly double that of last year, which had a turnout of 7.8%! We also saw an rise in the number of ballots cast, from 621 to 951, which represents a more than 50% increase.
Due to a typo in the ballot email, we opened the election for an additional four days to those who emailed us requesting a ballot. We had nine members submit their ballots during that time. They are counted in the 951 voters listed above.
Comparatively, the highest turnout rate was in 2011, when about 25% of approximately 4,000 eligible members voted; this sharp rise was mostly due to widespread recognition of one of the candidates. We don’t have voter turnout information for 2010, only anecdotal statements that it was significantly lower than that.
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 three candidates this year, 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 next year.