{"id":795,"date":"2009-08-02T07:11:12","date_gmt":"2009-08-02T11:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=795"},"modified":"2009-08-02T07:11:12","modified_gmt":"2009-08-02T11:11:12","slug":"dont-forget-to-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/08\/02\/dont-forget-to-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Forget to Vote!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you are an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informs.org\">INFORMS<\/a> member (if you are interested in operations research, why <em>aren&#8217;t<\/em> you a member?), you should have received an email yesterday directing you to a website to vote for the next set of members of the Board of Directors.\u00a0 That email has all the information you need to vote:\u00a0 your member number and a code word.\u00a0 You go to the website, enter those two numbers, get a form and spend a minute or two voting.\u00a0 The candidate bios and platform statements are clickable from the ballot, so you don&#8217;t even have to research before hand (though if you want to, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informs.org\/index.php?c=774&amp;kat=Election%3A+Candidate+list\">candidate information<\/a> is available).\u00a0 A few points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Your vote really does count.\u00a0 The year before I got elected President, the Presidential vote resulted in a tie.\u00a0 One extra vote either way would have prevented a run-off.<\/li>\n<li>The candidates are chosen by a Nominating Committee (something the Past President chairs), though people can put themselves on the ballot by petition.\u00a0 The latter used to happen more often:\u00a0 it seems pretty rare these days.<\/li>\n<li>INFORMS uses approval voting, where you can vote for as many candidates as you want for each position.\u00a0 In many cases, I end up voting for all of the proposed candidates.\u00a0 This is particularly true if I do not know the candidates, or I know them both equally well, and if I think they will do about equally well in positions.\u00a0 Sometimes I have stronger feelings, so vote for one (or decidedly don&#8217;t vote for one!).\u00a0 While it is equivalent in terms of the winner to vote for none as to vote for all, in terms of meeting quorum requirements, it is better to vote for all.\u00a0 By the way, approval voting works much better when there are three or more candidates (or more than one position to be filled from the same set of candidates).\u00a0 Approval voting to choose the winner between two candidates, as this election is, doesn&#8217;t add much (though I like the opportunity to vote for all or, rarely, none).<\/li>\n<li>A number of candidates are running unopposed.\u00a0 INFORMS allows its Vice Presidents to have two terms in a position.\u00a0 Often, the nominating committee will decide to run someone up for reelection unopposed.\u00a0 It doesn&#8217;t always happen, but it is the norm.<\/li>\n<li>INFORMS does not announce number of votes in an election.\u00a0 I was on the Board when that rule was created (and may even have formulated the rule).\u00a0 The ideas was to not embarrass candidates who lose a blow-out election.\u00a0 Now, I am not 100% convinced this is a good rule:\u00a0 there is information in the votes (for instance, knowing the number who voted for none of the candidates versus those who voted for all).\u00a0 Even the nominating committee does not know the number of votes, so, for instance, a candidate who came very close to winning might not get nominated again, while a candidate that the electorate soundly rejected might get renominated the next year.\u00a0 Perhaps it is time for INFORMS to rethink this rule.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I sat on the INFORMS Board for six years, and am now completing six years on the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifors.org\"> IFORS Board<\/a>.\u00a0 Sitting on boards is generally interesting and rewarding (it is sometimes mind-numbingly dull, but I treat that as useful training in discipline).\u00a0 I have met some really fascinating and wonderful people through the boards, and those contacts have been useful years after our terms ended.<\/p>\n<p>We should be greatful that people are willing to give their time to boards like INFORMS.\u00a0 If you are a member, now would be a good time to spend a couple minutes voting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you are an INFORMS member (if you are interested in operations research, why aren&#8217;t you a member?), you should have received an email yesterday directing you to a website to vote for the next set of members of the Board of Directors.\u00a0 That email has all the information you need to vote:\u00a0 your member &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/08\/02\/dont-forget-to-vote\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Don&#8217;t Forget to Vote!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-informs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}