Many thanks to those SAMEA Members who have voted in the 2007 SAMEA Board election!!

The voting process of the SAMEA Board election 2007 entailed the following steps:

1 (Dis)continuation of Board membership

The following Board members served out their term until March 31, 2007 and were not available for re-election for one year.

 

The following Board members resigned due to workload and/or personal reasons during the course of the year:

 

The following Board members are staying on to ensure continuity and signed up for another two years:

 

2 Nomination of Board candidates

The nomination process started with inviting people to nominate candidates via our listserv SAMEAtalk (Feb 28, Mar 11, and Mar 13), other listserves, the SAMEA website, and by word of mouth.

Announcements and calls for nominations had not been sent to our membership data-base. This related to the fact that the data-base comprised of (1) paid up members, (2) paid up members that had not provided their (correct) email address or other contact details, (3) people that had registered for membership but not yet confirmed their membership by paying their fees, and (4) people who had paid but their membership had not been activated yet due to administrative backlogs. Since the administrative burden was extremely high just before the conference, distinguishing between groups 3 from 4 (together making up over 55% of ‘membership’ data-base) as well as trying to identify the ‘unknown’ activated members was rather cumbersome and unrealistic. Sending nomination invites indiscriminately to all on the data-base would include people who had signed up for membership but never paid and who on second thoughts might never want to join SAMEA. This would imply that we used their email address for other purposes than they had given us permission for. In addition, selecting one group over the other would imply a systematic bias caused largely by our own administrative shortcomings. (The administration of SAMEA was under severe strain due to the conference and limited funds to hire admin support. The increase in memberships and relatively less stress due to the organisation of the conference will assist in improving administrative matters.)

At the same time, we did not want to restrict the call for nominations to our membership base. Using SAMEAtalk as well as other relevant listserves seemed to be the most appropriate option, since these listserves reach people interested in M&E and who actively engage in information sharing. 

After having secured only three nominations, the deadline for Consulting/Research nominations had been extended to 9am on Wednesday March 15, 2007. As is generally known, very few people nominate candidates for professional organisations. The fact that SAMEA had secured nine candidates for the Board election should be regarded as a very fortunate outcome of the nomination process.

  

3 Acceptance of nominations

All the nominees accepted their candidature for SAMEA Board membership. The nine candidates represented the private sector (5), tertiary sector (4) and the public sector (1), with one indicating involvement in more than one sector.

 

4 Voting procedure

All those members whose payment for SAMEA membership had been verified were eligible to vote. The payment verification process aimed at enabling eligible members to vote closed on March 28. Members were requested to vote for five out of the nine candidates via personal emails that had been send out the 20^th and 28^th of March. In addition, reminders had been sent out via SAMEAtalk and posted on the website.

The personal email contained the SAMEA membership number of each eligible voter as well as an individual randomly assigned voting code. The voter was requested to use both in the voting process to enable verification of multiple votes through other than just the membership number identity of the voter. The randomly selected voting code was assigned to the member by an external volunteer from GTZ. 

The invite contained a hyperlink which referred the eligible voters to a web-based survey supported by Surveymonkey. In order for the responses to the questionnaire to be registered, the eligible voter had to provide both the membership number and the voting code. The other questions on demographic characteristic were not obligatory.

The voting survey was administrated and sponsored by Social Dimensions, which is run by one of the Board members. However, to ensure independence and control, all administrative activities were verified by Ilse Benekens, who is an independent, chartered accountant form Crown Financial Services. 

 

5 Voter turnout  

The web-based survey provided descriptive statistics including the counts of votes for the candidates. The survey also described the counts for membership and voting codes. No multiple votes were encountered. In total 42 eligible voters, or 25% of the total eligible voters, had cast their vote. Slightly more females than males had voted with 55% of turnout being female and 43% male (one missing). By far the majority of those who had cast their vote were located in Gauteng (69%) or in the Western Cape (21%). The Eastern Cape, Free State and Limpopo provinces were each represented by one voter. 

  

6 Election results  

The election results were announced during the SAMEA Annual General Meeting held at the Birchwood Hotel and Conference Centre in Johannesburg on 29 March 2007. The AGM was attended by approximately 40 paid up members and about 10 interested non-members.

One of the members requested the AGM to nullify the elections and to cancel the announcement of the election results. According to the member, improper procedures had been followed in the nomination process. However, in response to an open-floor voting process on the matter, the majority (38 versus 1) of the members voted against nullifying the elections and it was decided to regard the election results valid. 

The elected Board member candidates were announced: Professor Fanie Cloete, Dr Octavia Khabelani Mkhabela, Dr Sefiso B. Khumalo, Professor Sarah Jane Howie, and Dr Donna Rae Podems. 

The detailed results were as follows:

rank order	Candidate	total votes
1	Dr Sefiso B. Khumalo	30
2	Dr Octavia Khabelani Mkhabela	26
3	Dr Donna Rae Podems	25
4	Professor Fanie Cloete	24
5	Professor Sarah Jane Howie	23
6	Ms Mary Berrington Cole	20
7	Ms Mariaan Roos	18
8	Ms Sarah Jane Cairns	9
9	Professor Gert J. van der Westhuizen	6