More drama about the community election

If you are a regular reader, you may recall that on the first Tuesday of this month I voted in our little community election. There were nine people running for three seats on the board. I usually vote based on who writes the best flyer, and if you don't send me a flyer, I can't vote for you. I figure that anyone who cannot be bothered to send out a flyer doesn't really want to be on the board anyway.

So I received four flyers, and that meant that I only had to really think about two of the guys who were running against each other.

Two days later, I found a note on the door that said we would have to do the election over, because there was some problem and someone complained, and that the only fair thing for everybody was to have a second election.

Later I got a letter in the mail (not correctly addressed, but I got it anyway), claiming that the election had been properly held the first time, and that one of the losers was claiming that a new rule wasn't followed, and that was the reason that a second election was requested. According to the new rule, the ballet box is supposed to be locked in the office safe overnight instead of being left locked in the election place or taken home by the guy in charge of the election. But no one seems to know anything about this new rule, because it was supposedly made at the last board meeting, and the minutes haven't been typed up yet, and the board won't let anyone hear the tapes of the meeting.

The letter also included the election results. There were three people that only got five or ten votes each from their friends, probably because they didn't send out any flyers. The three guys that held office didn't win either, possibly because only one of them sent out a flyer. Basically, the three guys I voted for got about twice as many votes as the guys currently on the board. The current board member with the least votes is the guy who asked for a re-vote based on the fact that the new rule about using the safe was not enforced.

According to this letter, as I suspected, only 145 of us out of 300 voted.

A few days after this, I found another note on the door which gave out the phone numbers and some email addresses. The phone numbers were for the three guys who were voted out and the president of the board. Whoever sent the note wanted us all to call these guys and suggest that they give up and not bother with this second election.

I thought that was a bit mean to give out the phone numbers. Not that it is difficult to get the phone numbers if I had wanted them, but I don't think that you should give out someone else's number and suggest that people call and harass them. We could accomplish the same thing by leaving a message with the office. If the note had suggested that we all leave a message with the office saying that we've already had an election and we should honor the results, I probably would have done that. But calling to bug people at home just sounds so eighth grade.

Friday I got a second letter in the mail. It was a copy of a letter from a lawyer that was hired by one of the three guys who claims that they have already won the election and that should be the end of it. The lawyer says that the three new guys were elected according to the rules of the place, and that they need to replace the other guys on the board before the next meeting, and without having a second election. Otherwise the three new guys might sue the three old guys and the president of the board. And if that isn't enough, the three new guys might just sue the whole group of us in general.

Since I am 1/300th of the group, I wouldn't care for that last part.

I'm not sure if there should be a new election or not. But if there needs to be one, I'm not sure why we need to wait til the middle of next month to do it. It just sounds like they are stalling so that they can have another board meeting with the current group.

And the other thing that I would do (if there needs to be a second election) is only take votes from the 145 of us who voted last time. If the point of the second election is to make sure that the votes weren't tampered with, that's fine. The 145 of us who voted the first time will probably vote the same way the second time. But the rest of the people shouldn't be allowed to vote. If it had mattered to them, they would have voted the first time. I think that they are just trying use the time to get more votes.

I'm sorry if fifty or a hundred or so of your friends forgot to vote, but that's life. They didn't vote, and you lost. That's a different problem that has nothing to do with whether or not the ballet box was locked in the safe.

So much drama.

In other news, the falling branch was removed about two hours after I wrote my last post, and since it was one of the guys who works for us I do not expect to get a bill for it.