fao OASF / Paul Whitehead

[basilrobbie]

On behalf of the Blackpool Supporters Trust, I wanted to say a public thank you to OASF for agreeing that Paul could chair the team we assembled to run our annual elections this year ; and of course to thank Paul himself for doing so.

 

Not many people realise that in addition to managing the affairs of their own supporters group, a great many people support the fans of other clubs as well, especially when it comes to the electoral process. Paul has done that for us this year and we are very grateful.

 

Robbie

[underdog]

Hi BasilRobbie can I ask at your AGM this year how did you;

 

1) decide on the style of AGM. With regards to an in person attendance,  virtual only or a hybrid of both?

 

2) decide if postal voting is going be offered?

 

3) decide if proxy voting will be permitted?

 

And are any of the above written into your rules or articles

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

[basilrobbie]

31 minutes ago, underdog said:

Hi BasilRobbie can I ask at your AGM this year how did you;

 

1) decide on the style of AGM. With regards to an in person attendance,  virtual only or a hybrid of both?

 

2) decide if postal voting was to be offered?

 

3) decide to accept proxy voting?

 

And are any of the above written into your rules or articles

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

Hi underdog

 

I should say at the outset we only had three candidates for four vacancies this time, so there was no vote. However :

 

1) our AGM is primarily "in person", albeit we streamed it last year and are looking at options to do the same this time as well

 

2) when we formally announce the election process we tell Members that the default will be electronic voting and advise that anyone wishing to vote by post contact the Secretary as soon as possible (we ran our voting over three weeks to cater for this, in part). Nobody asked for one though, and only one person did last year

 

3) the issue of proxy voting hasn't come up while I have been Secretary - I think we would only do it by special arrangement, but can see circumstances where it might be a good option (if a Member is very ill, for instance)

 

Our Constitution covers some of the above ; we have specific guidelines on the length of the nomination and voting processes, submission of motions to the AGM and on the composition of the Election Management Group (EMG) , which is chaired by an independent non-Member (in this year's case,. Mr Whitehead). All of this pretty closely follows the good practice guidance from the FSA.

 

Having done this three times now, my experience is that the rules can cover most things, but a dollop of common sense is always helpful. It's more challenging when there are lots of candidates and you have a proper competition, because the EMG has a duty to ensure that all candidates are treated the same. 

 

I wish you luck in moving to CBS status. We did it in 2014-15, and our then Secretary did a great deal of work to make it happen. He (tragically) is no longer with us, but we have some collective memory of how it all worked, so do lte us know if you want to tap into any of that.

[underdog]

Thanks Basil. Some very similar processes and good practice too

 

FSA helped drafted OASF election policy. Although there has been some amendments this year and approved by OASF in September.

 

During covid, OASF offered electronic voting as well as postal vote. Specifically OASF had a number of historic paperbased members who were not great with technology. 

 

Coming out of of covid I was hoping for a hybrid AGM. In person and virtual to be more inclusive.

 

Proxy voting by members is written in OASF current articles and election policy that has been issued already. Plus postal voting is mentioned too

 

However, the response from OASF EMG is that they are not offer either and it is virtual only AGM with electronic vote that will open 2 days before.

 

This is disappointing news. In my opinion, OASF have missed a trick to maximise votes cast. Proxy voting allows members to nominate another member or even OASF Chair to vote for them. 

 

It will be interesting to hear post AGM how many members were entitled to vote and how many actually did. 

 

Good luck. Having been heavily involved in OASF AGM, I know its 2 months of shear hell to ensure a fair AGM. Haha