Fruited Plain Cooperative Society Election Process for the Annual Membership Meeting
Submitted by John Thorpe and Julie Rundell for the March 1999 Membership Meeting
Revised 3/16/03 at Annual Membership Meeting
Revised 4/4/04 at Annual Membership Meeting

1. Overview of Member Voting Process

a. There are three possible voting methods: by mail, on the website, or at the Annual Membership Meeting.  Members can only vote in one of these ways. In each of the methods, the voting member fills out a ballot form,validates the form, and submits the form.

b. The board can decide to use by-mail voting or website voting, or both.

2. Overview of Registrar Process

For each ballot submission, the registrar confirms the member's ballot and records that member as having voted, and puts the ballot, sight unseen, into the ballot box. This process occurs, for all ballots, prior to the Annual Membership Meeting, and prior to the counting of votes.

3. Details of Voter and Registrar Process

Voting Methods

a. Voting by mail:
i. Off-line refers to members who do not have internet access or who have requested a paper ballot. Those members who are voting off-line are determined prior to issuing the ballot forms.

ii. Off-line members will be sent, by postal service or hand delivery, a voting packet prior to the Annual Membership Meeting. A list of off-line members will be printed for the purposes of recording whether they have voted or not.

iii. The packet will consist of a ballot, candidate information, a stamped return envelope, and instructions. The ballot will be anonymous, but the envelope will have the voter's return address. The voter's signature is required across the flap of the envelope to validate their vote. In a household with more than one member, one return envelope can be sent instead, with validation being members' initials.

iv. The ballot must be received by the last postal delivery date prior to the Annual Membership Meeting. Late ballot envelopes are not valid, will be marked as such, and will not be opened.

v. Envelopes, when received, will be examined for validation. The member will be recorded as having voted, the envelope opened, and the ballot put, unseen, directly into the ballot box. The envelope will be saved separately.

b. Voting on the FPCS website:
i. On-line members will be sent, by postal service, hand delivery, or email their voting packet prior to the Annual Membership Meeting. The packet or email will consist of candidate information and instructions. The email may contain a hyperlink to some or all of the actual content which may be posted on the members' website.

ii. Two databases for voting will be created: VOTERS and CANDIDATES. The VOTERS database will contain all members who are not registered as voting off-line. It will have a checkoff field, which will indicate whether the member has voted or not. The CANDIDATES database will contain all of the candidates and a votes field, which will contain the number of votes they have received. There will be no way to determine which vote corresponds to which member.

iii. Only members who are not registered as voting off-line will be able to access the voting form. A temporary link will be placed on each such member's online Fruited Plain member page. The ability to logon will serve the function of validating the member's vote. The ballot form will contain candidate information, a checkbox for each candidate, and instructions. The voting form will be disabled after it has been used to submit a vote.

iv. To cast a vote, the Submit button is clicked. The program that compiles this form will do only the following:

• open the VOTERS database, look up the member's name, change the checkoff field from a 0 to a 1, close the VOTERS database.
• then, open the CANDIDATES database, and for each of the candidates that have been checked in the form, add 1 to the number in the votes field, close the CANDIDATES database.
• Prior to the Annual Membership Meeting, the registrar will remove the online links to the voting form. Then the VOTERS database will be downloaded and printed. This is the record of who voted online. The registrar will then download the CANDIDATES database and print it. It will be placed, unexamined, into the ballot box. The two databases will be copied to diskette, which will be verified and saved; other copies will be deleted.

c. Voting at the Annual Membership Meeting:
Only members who have not already voted may cast a vote at the Annual Membership Meeting. The process is like that described in part 1, except that the balloting envelope will not be mailed. After the envelope is turned in, it will be placed into a temporary holding box. Prior to the meeting, and before the votes are tallied, the envelopes in the holding box will be handled exactly as described in part 1. The ballots must be received by the start of the Annual Membership Meeting.

Ballots, envelopes, and diskettes will be saved for six months after the Annual Membership Meeting, then will be disposed of. They will not be reexamined for any reason except for those laid out in the bylaws.