Election Results 2007

The OrigamiUSA Election Committee reports its results:

Below is the letter the Election Committee sent, via email, to the OrigamiUSA Board of Directors as well as this year's candidates. I'm happy that we were able to resolve all of the questions so quickly, and I'd like to emphasize that without Rachel Langley's prompt efforts it could have taken much longer.

Mike Naughton
June 27, 2007

Board of Directors OrigamiUSA

Honorable Board:

The Election Committee of OrigamiUSA has certified the results of the 2007 Board of Directors election as follows:

293 proxies were received by mail, of which one was blank and three were postmarked after the deadline, leaving 289 valid proxies received.

94 votes were received at the annual meeting in New York City, of which 77 were valid, 12 were invalid because the voter was not a member on May 4, 2007, 1 was invalid because the voter was a minor, and 4 were invalid because they were multiple votes on a family membership (each membership, including family memberships, is only allowed one vote). In addition, two of the 77 valid votes were from voters who had previously sent in proxies, so the proxies were ignored and the votes at the annual meeting were counted, meaning a net total of 75 additional valid votes.

The 364 valid votes were tallied as follows:
For the "Local" seats: Ros Joyce received 273 votes
Margaret Van Sicklen received 252 votes
Toby Schwartz received 238 votes
Tony Cheng received 213 votes
Shrikant Iyer received 208 votes
Jan Polish received 189 votes

For the "Remote" seats:
Robert Lang received 327 votes
Ruthann Bessman received 315 votes
The final list of eligible voters contained 1371 names, so 364 votes represents about 26.6% of the membership, which is the highest percentage in recent years.

As you all know, this was a particularly challenging election for us, and we will be making some suggestions that we hope may make things easier in the future.

Finally, we would like to extend our deep appreciation and thanks to Rachel Langley, for her timely and thorough efforts in helping us to resolve the questionable ballots. Without her help, this process would have taken considerably longer, and we are sincerely grateful for her help.

Sincerely,

OrigamiUSA Election Committee
Jean Baden-Gillette
Michael Naughton