I believe that the root cause of low voter turnout lies with each
member's personal choice to vote or not.  Each individual situation is
different, yet we can place the situations into "big buckets".  I see
ARMA members falling into three groups.

Group 1 - Members that take an active interest in the association and
the elections.
Group 2 - Members that don't care about ARMA as an association but are
members for reasons other than association representation (typically
"customer members", or "checkbook members").
Group 3 - Members that do not have an adequate amount of information to
make an informed decision.

Within these three groups, group 1 will always vote, group 2 never will,
and group 3 may be persuaded to vote with some special attention.  So, I
believe that ARMA needs to focus on those members that feel that they
don't have enough information to make an informed decision.  I've
identified several reasons why "group 3" members don't vote, and will
provide some possible solutions to each.

1. Did not know elections are being held - ARMA and the EMC must "push"
the election information to each member, rather than expect members to
"pull" the information from ARMA.  The EMC needs to do a better job of
keeping members informed of the elections and reduce the time between
start and end of the elections.  Get the CRM database fully functional
at HQ, find out who the members are, what they want from ARMA, and serve
them individually.

2. Did not know the candidates - In this day of instant electronic
communications, ARMA cannot forget that this is not the way that many
members function.  Many members still read the hardcopy newspaper
delivered to their home, don't have email at home or at work, and don't
attend the annual conference.  So, ARMA needs to inform these members
differently than email and member forums.  The ideas of having candidate
webinars, published Q&A, and HQ-generated information for chapter
presentation are good, but the key is to push the appropriate
information to each member and not rely on each member to pull the
candidate information from ARMA.

3. Does not directly impact me - "As long as the candidates are
qualified for their respective position, who actually wins doesn't have
a direct impact on me."  This is probably true in the near term, but the
winning candidates will collectively move ARMA and the profession in
very specific directions.  This is not obvious to the outsider or casual
observer, so ARMA must do a better job of providing members with the
linkage between ARMA, candidate elections, and the individual member's
current and future employment.  Maybe this can be done through a
"political action committee-style" informational campaign during
election season.  This starts to touch on campaigning for specific
candidates, but I believe that factual information must be presented in
a no-nonsense manner for those members who do not have the history to
read between the lines.

In summary, I believe that ARMA and the EMC must do a better job of
answering the "what's in it for me" question for each member and
addressing their specific situation for not voting.  And, I agree with
Susan McKinney that we don't want to just increase the voting percentage
for sake of the numbers, but actually want to increase participation in
the association.  ARMA should first seek to understand why "group 3"
doesn't vote, then what can the association do to address those issues.


Lee Michael, CRM

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