craschworks

Those of you may have been dawdling about signing up for the FSP should sign up now if you wish to have an influence on which state is picked. The 5000 member mark is rapidly approaching, and the deadline for signups has been set for August 15, 2003. Ballots will be due by September 8. Here's the relevant message from Jason:

Due to recent rapid membership growth, the Board decided to set vote dates
now and finalize the rest of the ballot process later. We plan to send
out ballots to existing members on July 15. The deadline to sign up to
participate in the vote will be August 15 (if we haven't reached 5000 by
then, the date will be postponed, but it looks as if we will easily reach
5000 by then). The deadline to return ballots to the vote counting
company will be September 8, then the ballots will go online, with member
# listed, so that each voter can check his ballot and make sure it was
counted correctly. On September 15 the results will be officially
ratified.

Here are some other salient features of the ballot report being analyzed:

# Ballots will be paper, they can be returned by mail or by e-mail as
scanned attachments (if the voting company allows this)

# A single double-sided sheet will be allocated to each state to make its
case, these will be included in the ballot mailing – start putting
together your reports NOW (use the state email lists)

# We will use an independent vote counting company (we've asked
election.com to do it, but haven't gotten a quote yet)

The reason we haven't been able to approve the report is that there's
still discussion over whether to require either notarization, a document
with name & address, or a phone number. I think that tripartite system
should work pretty well, provided not too many people opt for the phone
call.