Readers of my blog (all 10 of you) will know that I am a frequent critic of RPI. However, in our recent district conventions, we saw RPI in action in a good way!
Originally, we in the districts were told that RPI had planned on having electronic voting at the State convention but not at the District conventions. To me this didn’t make sense, even though it would be expensive to have electronic voting at all four district conventions, it is the district conventions that need electronic voting. Of course, electronic voting requires the vendor to send a technician to come to the site at least overnight (maybe two nights in order to drive to a larger airport and catch a flight) in addition to the equipment cost.
The district conventions have elections for four State convention committees and the State Central Committee. In the 2nd District there were 10 (I think) candidates for SCC and several rounds of voting. As convention chair I can tell you that even with a few glitches, electronic voting made everyone’s life easier. Without it our voting would have taken 4 or 5 hours — I remember a District in Mt Pleasant that did take over four hours just to elect SCC members.
I know that some people are disappointed that we will not have electronic voting at the State Convention. However, electronic voting is of greatest value in elections. At the state convention, the only election we will have will be to affirm Adam Gregg as our Lieutenant Governor nominee. I know the decision to use electronic voting at District convention was made at the last minute. But it was definitely the right thing to do. Thank you RPI!
Yes David it was even easy for this first timer. After the first vote the instructions made sense. I also believe voting privately allowed more choices!