Participants 6
While your HSAFP Chapter isn’t required to have an election, having your members vote—with a few guiding rules—should ensure an equal opportunity for all interested members to run.
Cost-Free Campaigning
No students shall use funds to bribe or buy votes.
Instead, students interested in being a Chapter Officer should focus on campaigning on personal social media, at lunch, or with posters. Potential Chapter Officers shall also have the opportunity to give a 1-2 minute explanation on why they should be elected to a specific position (these short speeches should occur right before voting).
Bottom Line: Your campaign should cost you nothing!
One Vote per HSAFP Member
Two Different Options: Voting
First-Past-the-Post is a voting system where the candidate with the most votes wins, even if they don’t have a majority.
Ranked Choice Voting allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed based on voters’ next preferences until a winner is determined.
HSAFP Teacher Advisors (or three members who are not current Chapter Officers) will choose the type of voting!
And then…you vote!
The current leadership team will choose when to vote and then announce it on Connect/social media/elsewhere so all members are informed. Limit voting to one week.
- You can offer the option to vote in a club meeting AND outside of your club meeting, online.
- Create a form/survey (like Google Forms, etc.) for ease of voting and remind your members they should only vote once.
- Include the name and grade of the voter so you can easily see if they voted more than once. Omit votes from the same members (teacher advisors will want to be involved in the counting)
- Create a form/survey (like Google Forms, etc.) for ease of voting and remind your members they should only vote once.
Election Notes
Remember, HSAFP elections are not required and may not happen for a variety of reasons: your chapter has a small number of HSAFP members, your chapter is currently virtual, no one else runs except the current HSAFP leadership team…the complications continue, but we won’t detail them all. 🙂
Ultimately, it will be your whole chapter’s decision whether to host an election, so speak to your Chapter President and Teacher Advisor about holding an election!
