Voting takes place at the Annual Meeting. You can vote in person at the annual meeting or appoint a proxy to vote on your behalf. You can appoint our designated proxy by postal mail or via email by filling out your online proxy ballot.
In sending your ballot to our designated proxy (who is also the ballot counter), you are designating that person to be your proxy, which means that he will cast a vote on your behalf at the annual meeting. Simply put, you are asking him to vote for you, and you are telling him how you want to vote.
No, you may appoint any proxy you wish, however, that person must vote in person on your behalf at the Annual Meeting and their proxy designation from you must conform to NY state law for proxy ballots. To designate a different proxy, please request a paper proxy ballot from the office, fill it out with the person’s name you wish to designate and have that person bring the ballot to the Annual Meeting to vote for you.
Yes; if you are eligible to vote and have a website account, you can fill out a proxy ballot online that will be emailed to the designated proxy, appointing him/her as your proxy for the election.
In addition to email, your designation and votes are stored, encrypted, on our local system where they will be used by the ballot counter. Only the ballot counter has access to the encrypted votes. After you have submitted your online proxy ballot,, your personalized ballot page will show that your vote was recorded.
No, it’s not required. You may request a paper proxy ballot from the Home Office and send it in via postal mail.
We need to verify that each vote comes from a current member, and that no member votes more than once. Your name and membership number allows us to do that.
Yes.
The only person who sees your ballot is the person who counts them. That person does not reveal any individual votes to anyone else.
All proxy ballot information stored in the online system is encrypted with a password known only to the ballot counter, so only the ballot counter can see them. After the election is over, all records are cleared.
The person who counts the ballots checks the name on the ballot against the membership number, and if they don't match they will reject the ballot. To make that person's job easier, please use the name that appears first on the address label. If you're not sure which name that is, writing all the names on the ballot will help the ballot counter to identify your membership.
No; you must be a current member 50 days prior to the election and on the date of the election, and Junior and Society memberships are not eligible to vote.
Each eligible membership, no matter what category, gets one vote. That means a family membership gets only one vote.
No -- that is not the proxy's function. The proxy will cast a vote for you based on your instructions. If you don't make a clear choice, the proxy will not vote your ballot.
The proxy will not cast any votes on your behalf.
No. Write-in candidates will not satisfy the candidate eligibility criteria and so any write-in names will be ignored.
The proxy will cast votes for the candidates you choose, and no others.
Each proxy ballot revokes any previous ballot, so if you vote multiple times, the most recently received one (whether web or postal) will prevail. Postal delivery times are unpredictable, so we strongly suggest you not use the postal proxy ballot if you vote more than once.
The person counting the ballots—for obvious reasons—is acting independently and doesn't have regular contact with either the Board or other OrigamiUSA volunteers. If you wish to communicate with them, it is better to contact OrigamiUSA directly.