ALA Elections 2015 - Some Reflections

First of all, wow. It was an interesting election.

All of the results are posted on the ALA web site, here.

One of the documents that I particularly looked at was 2015 Election Response Rate by Ballot. With all the sections of divisions and all the round tables, there are 81 different ballots. (Yes, you read that right, 81!) Most people only get some of them. How many, depends on how much you pay in dues and how the particular division or round table is structured. What I was interested in was the participation rate.

Both for ALA as a whole (Ballot 0 - Officers), like in the local, state, and national elections, the turnout of voters is not always what we would like. It is usually lower. But, I am proud to say that the election in which I was a candidate had one of the highest participation rates.

My visual inspection (I could not quickly grab it an put it in Excel for sorting, but may try again) shows these as the top participation rate groups:

RMRT	56.06%
GLBTRT	38.67%
LearnRT	38.34%
ASCLA	33.66%
IFRT	33.62%
EMIERT	32.68%
SRRT	31.14%

This means that ASCLA was the only division with more than 30% participation. It is the smallest division (615 members eligible to vote). But it clearly reinforces my contention that it is the easiest to get involved in - I believe that the voting participation rate shows that.