** If you have difficulty registering or logging into the test vote meeting, please email me at elections@cupe1048.ca **
Election process
For the elections portion of the meeting, I will take over the Chair, as Elections Officer. I will chair from a login titled ELECTION CHAIR. We will start with the by-election for the position of President and work through the other elections in the same order that they appear in our Bylaws. That order is President (by-election), First Vice President, Second Vice President (by-election), Treasurer and Chief Shop Steward.
At the time of the elections, all voting participants will be asked to turn on their video. This is the only way we can be reasonably certain that each person is logged in only once and will be casting only one ballot. Proxy voting is not permitted.
Point of Privilege and Point of Order
During the elections portion of the meeting, no speakers will be allowed, other than the Host, the Election Chair, and the candidates. Outside of this, only a valid Point of Order or valid Point of Privilege will be allowed during the election process.  Per the Rules of Order, only a Point of Order or Point of Privilege can be used to interrupt a speaker (or the election process).
A member may make a Point of Order to call attention to some violation of the rules of the meeting.
A member may make a Point of Privilege to object to something which prevents their continued participation in the meeting. For example, a participant that is acting in an inappropriate or hostile manner (making inappropriate faces or gestures while a candidate is speaking, raising signage of any kind on their video feed etc).
The chat function will only be enabled to communicate to the host and co-host. If you have a Point of Order or Point of Privilege, please send a chat to the host or co-host with the word “Point”.
Candidate speeches
Each candidate will be given an opportunity to speak to the meeting participants. To keep the length of the meeting manageable, each candidate will be given two minutes to speak, for each position they nominated. At the two-minute mark, I will raise my hand as a method of notification. At the two minute and thirty second mark, the candidate’s microphone will be muted. The candidates will be given the opportunity to speak in the order in which their nominations were received.
Voting
Once each nominee has had an opportunity to speak to the participants, we will vote. The vote for each election will appear on your screen as a poll. Your votes will be confidential to both the participants and hosts. You click on the candidate of your choice and then register/send your vote. Each poll will remain open for one minute.
The participants will be able to tell on their screens, how many participants are in the meeting. This number, minus guests and duplicate logins for host and co-host(s), will be the total number of eligible votes.
At the beginning of voting for each position, I will ask the Host to “tile the doors”. This will freeze the participants for that vote and no new participants will be allowed to enter the meeting until the voting for that position is completed. No participant should leave the meeting during a vote, including run-off ballots.
Results
Once the poll closes, the results appear instantaneously on the host and co-host computers. The host will then share the result screen with all participants.
The host receives the total number of ballots cast on her screen, but the co-host and participants do not see this number. The host will state verbally, the number of ballots cast so that all participants will know that this number does not exceed the number of eligible votes. The number of ballots cast can be less than the number of eligible voters, but not greater.
Run-off votes
Each election must be won by a margin greater than 50% (50% +1). Elections being contested by more than two people may require a run-off vote if no candidate gets 50% +1 votes on the first poll. If this happens, we will have a second poll, with the candidate with the fewest votes removed. This could conceivably happen more than once.
Duplicate logins and guests
The host of the meeting and any co-hosts do not have the option to participate in voting. Therefore, both the host (Records and Privacy Coordinator, Ravneet Dhillon) and co-host (me) will be logged in twice. Our host and co-host logins will be titled HOST and ELECTION OFFICER. We will be logged in a second time under our own names, so that we can vote in the elections. Any additional participants not eligible to vote, our National Servicing Representative for example, will not be added to the number of eligible votes cast.
To be clear, if we have 50 participants which includes one guest, one host and one co-host, the number of eligible ballots is 47.
Scrutineers and challenges
Since there are no physical ballots for these elections, there is nothing for scrutineers to review. If any candidate wishes to challenge the election or have the results reviewed, the entire election will be recorded.
In solidarity
Kelly Boudreau
Elections Chair