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BCA Ballot 2019 Results

Posted: Tue 17 Dec 2019 00:18
by BCA
We can announce the results of the ballot which closed at 23:59pm on Friday 13th December.

The constitutional changes around which this ballot was based were put forward at the 2019 AGM and passed in both houses at the meeting, hence their progression to a ballot of all members. All constitutional changes require 70% support in both the House of Individuals and the House of Groups in order to be implemented.

The changes were intended to remove the two-house voting system at General Meetings, leaving voting by individual members (CIMs and DIMs) only. They would also create a requirement for online voting to be made available, whereby all motions that achieve a defined level of support at the AGM itself (not just constitutional matters), as well as contested elections, are put to an online vote of all individual members for a roughly one-month period after the AGM.

The ballot was conducted using an electronic system developed specifically for this ballot. Access to vote was controlled via a unique ballot ID assigned and sent to all members.

All members for who we had email addresses were emailed ballot details and a ballot ID on 8th November. For all the members we did not have email addresses for, as well as those for who we received an email bounce-back notification, a postal letter was sent in the week commencing 11th November, including a ballot slip for anyone wanting to vote by return postage.

The results are as follows:

House of Individuals:
Votes to support the motion: 854 (82.5%)
Votes to reject the motion: 181 (17.5%)
Turnout: 1035 of 6285 (16.5%)

House of Groups:
Votes to support the motion: 66 (76.7%)
Votes to reject the motion: 20 (23.3%)
Turnout: 86 of 185 (46.5%)

Result:
Both houses exceed the 70% support requirement, and so the motion has passed.

Statistics on postal returns:
The total number of postal returns was only 56 (5% of the total ballot turnout), meaning 95% of voters chose to use the online system to cast their vote. Of those 5% who returned their ballot by post, 66% voted to support the motion.

Five postal ballot papers were rejected; one due to no ballot ID having been entered by the voter, two due to the ballot IDs being entered illegibly or incorrectly (considerable effort was made to try to decipher these), and two that arrived on Saturday 14th December, thus after the deadline.

Thank you to everyone who has worked very hard to make this ballot happen.