Elections

There are two proposed Bylaws Amendments presented by the Bylaws Committee and will be voted on April 7, 2025.

1. Currently, the bylaws stipulate that the committee be composed of a member from each Area. Some current Areas have few active members and finding volunteers can be impossible. This change will allow more flexibility in creating an effective, official committee.  Changing the wording to no more than nine members, rather than one member from each Area still allows one member from each area if a volunteer can be found.  
2. Currently, when elected offices are contested, elections are not finalized until after ballots are issued (no more than 60 days after the annual meeting); voting takes place; and then ballots counted. This means those winning the contested offices will take office weeks if not months after the beginning of the July 1 term start date. This gives the officer less than one year in office. Changing the term to two years will give the officers more time to learn their responsibilities and be more effective in their jobs. It will also save annual processing time and, potentially, annual postage costs if ballots are required to be mailed out.  This change for term of all elected officers to a TWO-YEAR TERM, rather One Year. President will therefore be limited to a single ELECTED term (two years total), and all other officers to three terms (six years total). The outcome is still the same as current bylaws in that the current bylaws allow for the President to serve two years and all others no more than six. We are just eliminating the need to have annual elections, just every other year. The cost savings shown are only speculative IF we have to mail out ballots, which we are not now doing because we have the announcement of the elections in the NARFE magazine. But if we did have to send out ballots, It would save us the $2,000 for each election.

 A copy of the Current Bylaws can be found:  https://vanarfe.org/legal/