Running Effective Elections
by Family Councils Ontario
For Family Councils who have decided to hold elections the process should be planned well in advance because it usually takes more than one to two meetings and several steps are involved.
Given that many people, while they may have participated in an election, may not have organized one, some steps are outlined here to help you organize and run a successful Family Council election.
These steps are based on our Family Council Handbook Your Guide to Starting and Maintaining a Family Council.
Steps in planning and running an election:
- Establish a committee of a few folk who will take on planning and facilitating the election process.
- The committee will announce the elections to all families in the Home (via email, monthly mailings, newsletter, bulletin board, at Council meeting etc…), receive nominations (by email or paper), present them to the Council, and run the election when it is scheduled.
- Elections should be announced at least a month or two before the election is scheduled to take place and nominations received several weeks before the Election Day. Make sure to allow sufficient time for families to receive the notice of elections and submit their nomination forms.
- The committee should decide how to receive nominations and for what roles. Normally Councils who use the election process look for a chair person, a vice chair and a secretary. Some Councils have additional leadership roles but these three roles are generally the most common ones.
The committee can prepare a form that nominees can fill out that clarifies which role they are interested in, why they want that role and any other information that the Council would want to know about the nominee, for example their link to the Home and previous experience with Councils, peer support groups etc...
Nominees then fill out the nomination form and submit it in to a designated person on the Council (using paper forms or email). - The list of nominees should be distributed to the Council members before the election.
- The day of the election the nominees can be asked to say a few words of introduction to make sure that the families attending know who is being nominated for each leadership role.
- The day of election the Council members vote by secret ballots at a full meeting of the Council.
- Once ballots are counted the election results are announced and the new leadership takes over. Be sure to prepare a plan for the transfer of leaderships to the new leaders.
Things to consider:
The Council should decide what the “job description” of each of the leadership roles entails. It is important to make sure that everyone understands what is expected of a chair, vice chair and secretary. No one person in a leadership role should be doing all the work. The committee can prepare the roles and responsibilities of the leadership roles and present them to the Council for discussions and acceptance.
A Council can function without an election with volunteers taking up leadership roles as needed. That being said, it is very important that whichever way the Council decides to function the leadership structure and the Terms of Reference of the Council are reviewed yearly. It may be necessary, in some cases, to review the functioning of the Council more often if there is a large membership change within a few months’ time or other major changes occur.
The information in this blog is covered in our Handbook Your Guide to Starting and Maintaining a Family Council that is available in our Resources section.
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