Open Letter to DHHIG BOD

This is in response to DHHIG’s call for nominations. 

The letter can be found at this link…http://www.dhhig.org/_elections/2009/DHHIG_Election_Announcement.pdf

Vlog to come shortly!
 

An open letter to DHHIG Board of Directors,
RE: DHHIG Call for Nominations 

We would like to give our compliments to the election committee for attempting to bring the organization into the digital age.  Establishing an electronic voting system for the upcoming DHHIG election is an awesome idea. As a former Board member, we can understand that this task is not an easy one to take.

We have some serious concerns regarding the language of candidate eligibility and criteria stated in the call of the nomination letter and how the election is being performed.

1) The insertion of the general eligibility criteria section in the call of a nomination letter is in direct violation of the By-Laws since it is adding on to the position qualifications listed in the By-Laws. It appears that bulletin #3, #4, and #5 under general eligibility criteria is a new requirement in order to run for the position. According to the By-Laws, any type of revisions or additions to the By-Laws must be approved by 2/3 of General Membership voting. There are a lot of intelligent members out there; they can ask the candidates those type of character questions before casting a ballot. Also bulletin #5 appears to restrict the candidates pool to be those from the DC metro area since that DHHIG is requiring them to be present for meetings held in the Washington, DC area once a month. DHHIG has to understand that not all deaf Government employees are located in Washington, DC metro area and be open to the idea that anyone who works outside
of the DC-Metro area can still apply. 

We recommend that the general eligibility section be removed in its entirety and some of those (hours of duty, ethics approval) could be moved to “position description” in a suggestive manner that a person should have based on DHHIG’s past experience rather than making it a requirement
 

2) The request for a nomination letter concerns us. The concern is that, the way it is written, it appears that the Board of Directors and the election committee could use the letter to screen out candidates.  By failure to submit a letter is the candidate disqualified? Or, if a situation occurs that the candidate doesn’t satisfy one of the criteria in the nomination letter, is s/he is disqualified? If so, then the Board has no authority to disqualify anyone. In additional, it should be up to the General DHHIG Members to decide on what qualities and experience the leader(s) should have for that particular position. 

In addition to above, candidates should not have to apply directly to the board or the committee in order to run for the desired position. They should be “applying” to the General Membership instead of to Board of Directors. 

We recommend that the request for nomination letter be removed, and have a sign up sheet instead for interested candidates. 

3) The election committee must remain neutral throughout the process and by inserting the word “recommended qualifications” under each vacant position violates the neutrality of the election process. We don’t believe that the Board should make their own recommendations on what skills the candidates should pose in order to influence the voter pool on any official election documents or procedures. 

We recommend that the additional “suggestive language” under the position qualifications be removed in its entirety to remain fully neutral and stick to what is written in the By-Laws. 

4) As for Section F in the submissions paragraph, it is our belief that the DHHIG Board of Directors or the election committee has no authority to eliminate any candidate(s) for any reason except if they don’t meet the requirements as stated in the By-Laws. Even if the candidate(s) comment or V-logs appears to be negative, it is up to the General Members to determine if the candidate is the right person for the job.  We do understand the reasoning of adding this requirement but again, the committee nor does the Board of Directors have any authority to eliminate candidate(s) as they see fit. There could be many perspectives on what is “negative”. It is possible that a person could think that if a candidate identifies the organization’s issues and problems as a negative approach. Who is to judge them? That should be up to the General DHHIG Members at the voting not the committee.

We recommend that the bulletin #F in submissions be removed to encourage freedom of speech. If it appears that the candidate is negative then that would reflect that person in front of the entire DHHIG members. Would the members vote for that person? Its up to them.

5) The Vlog election process is a great idea but DHHIG election committee
must ensure that all general members are given the opportunity to run for any desired position. The committee and Board of Directors must understand that not everyone is familiar with web-video technology. DHHIG must provide alternative methods if any interested candidates are not able to do a v-log but are still interested in running for the position.

We recommend that the election procedure adopt both video and the floor at the general election to ensure that everyone can still run for the position. The on-line ballots must open and close at the same time as the floor election according to Robert Rules of Order. Online ballots must have the ability to do a re-count if necessary and ensure each eligible DHHIG member(s) get to cast their ballot once and the fairness of the process. 

6) According to some of our sources, the people involved in the election
committee are actually member(s) of DHHIG’s Board of Directors. This brings
up quite a bit of conflict of interest issues and makes the whole process unfair and not neutral. DHHIG’s Board of Directors could be subject to accusations of election rigging especially the current directors who are seeking re-election. There is no transparency in the election process since DHHIG has not publicly identify names of people who are on the election committee. 

It is strongly recommended that DHHIG form a new election committee that consists of several neutral DHHIG members (no current board of director members)  who has no interest in running for any of the DHHIG’s vacant positions.  In addition, these members should not have any kind of personal relationship with the current board of directors. It is also requested that DHHIG identifies the names of the members on the election committee. 

7) The NTC chair as voting member on the Board of Directors is unconstitutional since the by-laws doesn’t allow the Board of Directors to appoint any voting member except for the Vice-Chair. The NTC chair is categorized under the “standing committee” and there is no language that allows any of the committee members to have a voting privilege. 

Since the Board granted the NTC chair a voting privilege, it is requested that the “NTC chair voting position” be removed from the call of nomination letter.  It is in the best interest of DHHIG that the current NTC chair remain but have no voting privileges on the Board of Directors. 

It is our goal to see that the election process is legit and offers fair opportunity for all general members to participate.

Due to the urgency of this matter since the election is only few weeks away, we request that the Board of Directors respond to this list of concerns within two weeks.  

Thank you,

Steven Gagnon
DHHIG Member

Deborah Broadus-Muskauski
DHHIG Member

Socorro Garica
DHHIG Member 

Matt Lockhart
DHHIG Member

Jeremy Gelb
DHHIG Member 

Kevin Ball
DHHIG Member