May 16, 2022 | Amy Bickmore | 794 views
AGM Information
On
behalf of the Executive, we wish to thank everyone who registered for this year’s
AGM and voted in our election for the Executive Committee members.
We also
wanted to take a few minutes to fully explain the process behind the decisions
made in regard to the AGM and election format.
There has been some miscommunication shared on social media by members
of our community and this information should hopefully clear up some of the
questions.
Over the past two years, the Covid-19 pandemic forced us to pivot in our delivery of meetings. This resulted in increased participation in the last two AGM’s, allowing more members to participate. The Zoom platform has been incredibly beneficial, and we continued to follow the lead by hosting a virtual AGM and Election as some of our other partners did. One such example of this year’s AGM and Election with the Eastern Ontario Minor Hockey Association, which just concluded last week. During this meeting, voters used the raised hand feature of Zoom to vote in the election and candidates were unable to speak to their platform at any point.
As per our current constitution, our annual AGM must be set and announced a minimum of 30 days prior to it being held and at the time of scheduling, the state of the pandemic and accompanying restrictions were still in question, so the current Executive decided to once again stay with an online format.
Originally, our plan was to host a live vote on Zoom during the AGM itself, however one of the new candidates had concerns about voter anonymity and wanted oversight into the ballot process by the Ontario Minor Hockey League (OMHA), as they had concerns that the current Executive might skew the results during the ballot collection process. The OMHA has no involvement as to how associations conduct their AGM’s and to alleviate the concerns of this one candidate, a third-party voting platform was hired to send out a secure link to each voter and tally the results. This takes all responsibility of the vote off Otonabee Minor Hockey and leaves just the responsibility of announcing the results.
Due to the large number of registered voters (102 delegates), the election was ran ahead to ensure everyone had fair and equal opportunity to vote. Many of our members shared their desire to participate and have their voice heard through the election process, but due to reasons, such as shift work, would not have been able to do so in person and this provided an equal opportunity for all. It is important to note that the constitution outlines who is eligible to vote and clearly states that each household/family unit is entitled to one vote. In the case where multiple household members registered to attend the AGM, the first form received was issued voter designation status. AGM attendance is limited to our membership.
The other registered members can still attend the AGM itself. Pre-registration for the online AGM by a set deadline was required to ensure our Zoom account could accommodate the number of registrants and ensure the confidentiality of our organization, ensuring anyone wishing to attend is eligible to do so.
It is our hope that this settles some of the false information being shared about the current Executive and the process to which our AGM is being held this year.
Results of the election will be posted on our website no later than Thursday, May 19th.