Executive Director’s Message by Karen A. Gould Lessons Learned from the VSB’s First Electronic Election D ECEMBER 2, 2014 , brought the result of the Virginia State Bar’s first electronic election, a three-way contest for president-elect among Raymond B. Benzinger, Thomas A. Edmonds, and Michael W. Robinson. Michael Robinson prevailed with 2,043 votes. The election was run between November 1 and December 1. Prior to the election, the candidates published position statements in Virginia Lawyer and attended several local bar meetings to state their campaign positions. The VSB advertised the election beforehand and during the election in Virginia Lawyer magazine, the monthly E-News, and e-mails from President Kevin E. Martingayle. Throughout the election, a VSB staff member was on duty to assist members with the election process. Voter turnout was 14.49 percent of eligible voters. Eligible voters were active “in good standing” members as of October 1, 2014. Active members are lawyers admitted to practice law in Virginia who pay full dues and satisfy the other membership obligations. As of October 1, 2014, there were 31,180 eligible voters. Contested president-elect elections are rare. The last one was in 2012 when Kevin Martingayle defeated Ray Benzinger in a hotly contested race with a 20 percent turnout of eligible voters in a paper ballot election. In 2001, approximately 25 percent of eligible voters participated in the election. 1 The turnout was 34.8 percent in 1997 and 27.6 percent in 1996. 2 A trend is clearly shown through these statistics in decreased participation in VSB statewide elections, regardless of whether they are conducted by paper ballot or electronically. Of those who voted and responded to a survey accompanying the ballot, 95 percent reported they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the process. Anecdotal reports indicate that the principal problem was receipt of the initial e-mail from Survey & Ballot Systems (SBS), which conducted the election. Although the VSB had asked its members to whitelist or add SBS’s e-mail address as a safe sender so that the election e-mail would not be swept into the recipient’s spam folder, apparently that still occurred. Some questioned why the VSB did not send the initial e-mail with the link to the ballot. The VSB could not send the e-mail because it intentionally did not have the information relative to each individual member’s unique identify-ing number. One of the goals of having a third party handle the election is to avoid any allegations of impropriety. SBS had to send individual e-mails to the 31,180 eligible voters, personalized with the information on how that per-son could vote. The VSB is not set up to handle such e-mail content. The cost of the 2014 president-elect electronic election was $6,500. In 2012, the election cost the bar $26,000 with mailed paper ballots. An election in 2014 conducted with paper ballots would have cost more than $26,000 because of increased costs and a larger active membership. Because of the high costs of a paper-ballot statewide election, elec-tronic elections appear to be the realis-tic choice for the future, if contested statewide elections occur in the future. In light of the positive response to the electronic president-elect election and the cost savings, the upcoming Council elections will also be con-ducted electronically. The savings will be approximately $10,000, about one-half of what it would cost to do the election through paper ballots. Members interested in running for Council must file a nominating peti-tion signed by ten other members of the circuit on or before April 1, 2015, along with a statement of qualifications not exceeding 150 words and a digital photograph. You must be an active member in good standing of the cir-cuit. To know what circuits have seats up for election, please see the election notice posted following this article. Endnotes: 1 Peter Vieth, Robinson wins 3-way VSB election , Virginia Lawyers Weekly, December 2, 2014, at http://valawyer-sweekly.com/2014/12/02/robinson-wins-3-way-vsb-election/. 2 Id. 10 VIRGINIA LAWYER | February 2015 | Vol. 63 www.vsb.org