ILDA voting procedures

VOTING TYPE 1 - In-person ballot voting at the General Business Meeting: Votes for Board and President should not be cast until candidates have finished their speeches at the General Business Meeting. All ILDA Members attending the Membership Meeting may vote. Votes are cast for A) election of Board members, B) preference ranking of potential President candidates, and C) any motions made at the meeting.

At in-person meetings these votes will be done by accessing the emailed link to the online ballot sent earlier in the week. If an in-person voter cannot access the emailed link, they will be given a paper ballot.

At virtual online meetings, the Board and President voting will be done using the emailed link to an online ballot sent earlier in the week. Members attending virtual online meetings where new motions are brought up at the meeting may not be able to vote on motions (because it takes too long to set up the online ballot).

Votes on any motions will be done using procedures that allow Corporate Members to have more votes than other Members, as per the bylaws.

VOTING TYPE 2 - Show-of-hands voting at the General Business Meeting: Members can raise their hands to show whether they vote For, Against or Abstain on a motion or issue. Show-of-hands voting does not take into account that Corporate Members have more votes than other Members.

For this reason, it is used only where the previous discussion indicates there will be a clear majority. Any voting Member can dispute the show-of-hands results and can request a ballot vote (type 1); another person must second the request in order to have a re-vote by ballot.

VOTING TYPE 3 - Voting by acclamation: A voice vote. Within ILDA, this is used when there is just one nominee for a position (e.g., President). Someone seconds the nomination, and then Members attending are asked to say "Aye" to indicate acceptance of the nominee.

VOTING TYPE 4 - Ratification voting: A vote of Members, to ratify (or agree to) a Bylaws change previously made by the Board of Directors. While the Board is empowered to make changes to the Bylaws, any such changes must be ratified by Members. Ratification can be done either by Members voting at the General Business Meeting, or it can be done by online voting. The method and timing of voting is up to the Board.

Note: Any Bylaws changes voted by Members at the General Business Meeting are automatically approved by Members and do not need ratification. Ratification is only needed when the Board makes Bylaws changes prior to the General Business Meeting.

VOTING TYPE 5 - Online voting prior to the General Business Meeting: ILDA Members who cannot attend the General Business Meeting can vote by online ballot where they give a preference ranking of A) Board members, and B) potential President candidates. These votes must be cast before the start of the General Business Meeting. See the 2023 sample above for an example ballot.

Note that ILDA Members not attending the General Business Meeting cannot vote on C) any motions made at the meeting. This is because they are not present to hear the discussion. It is also is an encouragement to attend the General Business Meeting.

VOTING TYPE 6 - Online voting: All Members may vote by emailed ballots which give more votes to Corporate Members as per the Bylaws. A simple majority of the total votes cast (taking into account the Corporate Members' multiple votes) will win. Such online votes begin with a discussion period of at least 14 days, followed by a voting period of at least 7 days.

(Note: VOTING TYPE 4 - Ratification voting can be done either at the General Business Meeting as described in the section above, or it can be done by online voting between General Business meetings. The method and timing of voting is up to the Board.)

VOTING TYPE 7 - Non-binding polls: The Board can poll Members to assess their opinions on a subject. This helps give the Board guidance. However, it is not binding -- the Board members can vote a different way if they want. A non-binding poll can be done at any time, including during General Business Meetings.

VOTING TYPE 8 - ILDA Awards voting

For the ILDA Awards category "Laser Photography", each Member casts one vote. If a Corporate Member has additional employees ("bundle members") listed in the ILDA database, each of them will receive a ballot. However, Corporate Members do NOT automatically have more than one vote — only if they listed additional employees in the database.

For the ILDA Awards category "Laser Jockey," each person attending the live Laser Jockey competition casts one vote. This includes both Members and any guests attending.

For the ILDA Career Achievement Award, each Member votes for one nominee, casting the number of votes corresponding to their Membership level as described below under "Number of Votes". E.g., Corporate Members automatically have more votes based on their Membership level.

For all business votes -- Board, President, and motions -- and for Career Achievement Award voting, each ILDA Member has the number of votes shown below. Currently, the votes and dues amounts are as shown:

Corporate Level 1 Members, $1040 dues -- 4 votes
Corporate Level 2 Members, $520 dues -- 3 votes
Corporate Level 3 Members, $260 dues -- 2 votes
Nonprofit Members, $130 dues -- 1 vote
Individual Members, $130 dues -- 1 vote
Hobbyist Members, $95 dues -- no vote
Student Members, $52 dues -- no vote

For the ILDA Awards categories Laser Photography and Laser Jockey, each Member (or each attendee at the Laser Jockey competition) casts one vote. This is done to simplify the voting process because there are other factors -- voting for multiple photos, Members voting for their own entries, time requirements -- which add complexity or potential unfairness in other areas.

ILDA Corporate Members pay more in dues, and in return receive correspondingly more ILDA Member votes. (See the section "Number of Votes" above.)

When ILDA sends online ballots, Corporate Members' choices are automatically multiplied by their number of ILDA Member votes, so they have the correct "voting power."

Technically, this is done by assigning a voting weight to each email address on the list of voters. So an Individual Member may be listed as "bobsmith@bslasers.com, 1" while a Corporate Level 1 Member may be listed as "info@hugelasers.com, 4" indicating they have 4 ILDA votes. When the software counts all ballots, it automatically will multiply the vote from "hugelasers.com" as if they voted four times.

There may be a few Corporate Members who want to split their ballots. For example, a Corporate Level 1 Member who has 4 total ILDA Member votes may want one ballot that lets Employee A cast 2 votes, and another ballot that lets Employee B cast 2 votes.

Therefore, if this is the case, the Corporate Member MUST contact ILDA before the deadline for Board candidate nominations. Let ILDA know you want to split your ILDA Member votes. Specifically, we need to know the email address to send each ballot to, and how many votes for that email address. (Example: "Give 2 of our 4 votes to employeeA@hugelasers.com and the other 2 votes to employeeB@hugelasers.com").

If you are a Corporate Member who is fine with casting all of your votes for the same candidate choices, then you do NOT need to do anything special -- do NOT contact ILDA to get split ballots.

Each year, Members can vote for the Board of Directors. Usually, either 2 or 3 of the five Board seats are up for election. (If a Board member has resigned and this was not the year their seat was up for election, then there could be 3 or 4 of the five Board seats up for election.)

ILDA Members are emailed a ballot with a list of all Board candidates. They rank the candidates from their most preferred to least preferred. See the section above, "Votes taken at the General Business Meeting," for a sample ballot from 2023.

When the voting period is complete, the Board candidate votes are counted using the "Scottish Single Transferrable Voting" method. This is considered simplest and best for situations where a small group of winners are selected from a larger group of candidates.

For Corporate Members, their votes are multiplied by the number of "ILDA votes" they are entitled to in the ILDA Bylaws, Article III, Section 5. This is done automatically by the online voting software. (See above for the Corporate Member split ballot option.)

During voting for the Board candidates, ILDA Members are also asked to rank all potential candidates for President. The potential candidates include all Board candidates plus the Board members who are not up for election in that year.

On the same ballot as the Board candidates, is a separate section where the potential Presidential candidates can be ranked from most preferred to least preferred. See the section above, "Votes taken at the General Business Meeting," for a sample ballot from 2023.

When the voting period is complete, first the Board votes are counted as listed above. This determines who the five Board Members will be for the next year.

Next the Presidential preference votes are counted using the "Borda Count" method. The Borda count is considered simplest and best when the voting results are ranked — who got the most votes, who got the second most, etc.

The President is selected from the highest-scoring (most votes) person who also 1) is on the Board and 2) agrees to serve as President.

For online voting, ILDA uses the services of "OpaVote". You can visit their website to learn more about how their system works.

Votes are secure: Each voter is sent a secret code that is required in order to cast a vote. This is either part of the URL that takes a voter to the ballot page, or is in the form of a "vote code" token that is uniquely generated. Encryption (SSL) is used for casting votes in elections. It is not possible to vote twice using the same URL or vote code token.

Votes are private: All votes cast are anonymous. The voting manager (at ILDA this is usually the Executive Director) knows whether a person has voted, but it is impossible to know how that person voted. It is also possible to see all ballots, but again, the information about who cast that ballot is removed.