During the 2008 election Diablo members were asked to ratify a number of changes to the bylaws. One goal of these changes was to allow for voting in our annual elections to take place online. Starting with the 2010 Board of Director elections we are able to conduct the balloting through our website.

You can check the Diablo Bylaws at any time by retrieving them from the website using this link.

Timeline

On October 5^th Doug Wiebe, our membership chair, will use the email broadcast service offered by PCA National Headquarters to send each of you a message containing a link to an online ballot. If you have never provided PCA with an email address, you've been missing out on lots of useful information, event announcements, and money-saving opportunities. To correct this, go to http://www.pca.org and update your information today!

Voting will be allowed from receipt of the email on October 5^th, through midnight Pacific time on October 25^th. Any ballots submitted after that time will only be used to resolve a tie.

Eligibility

According to the region bylaws, any Active Member in good standing may vote in the election. An Active Member is one who qualifies for membership by owning, co-owning, or leasing a Porsche, is 18 years of age or older, and who is current with their dues. [Diablo Bylaws Article IV Section 2.A]

Each Active Member may also designate a Family-Active Member, who is "the other person of the Active Member's immediate family, also 18 years of age or older, restricted to wife, husband, sister, brother, son, daughter, mother, or father.” To qualify this person would have been identified to PCA National at the time the Active Member joined or renewed.

Membership Numbers

Each Active and Family-Active member is issued a membership number by PCA National. This number appears on the membership cards sent out each year. If you cannot find your membership number, please contact PCA National at (703) 321-2111 or by visiting http://www.pca.org.

Number of Votes per Ballot

There are four vacancies being filled through this election. You may vote for up to four members by selecting from the nominated candidates or using the write-in area. If you vote for more than four candidates, your ballot will be invalid and will not be counted. (In even years there are five vacancies, in odd years there are only four.)

Duplicate Ballots

It is possible for a member to submit more than one ballot. However all ballots are timestamped, and only the first valid ballot from a given member will be counted.

Electronic Ballot

When you click on the link in the message you will receive on October 5^th, you'll be taken to a page on the Diablo website with a form like the one shown here. Each section will be reviewed to make sure it's perfectly clear how to use the ballot.

PLEASE NOTE: In this example we are using the 2010 election ballot. You will have different candidates to vote for and potentially a different number of them allowed (four versus five). Please read this year's ballot carefully before voting!

Personal Information

To use the electronic ballot you must identify yourself. When the election committee sends a paper ballot to your home, you have already been pre-validated by checking your membership status, name and address, et cetera. Because the email system provided by PCA National does not implement the rules our bylaws specify for voting eligibility, we must collect this information in order to validate ballots after they have been submitted.

Once ballots are validated the personal information will be separated so that the team counting the ballots will not be able to see which member cast the ballot they are processing.

Nominated Candidates

The next section lists the nominated candidates standing for election in alphabetical order. These members have already agreed to serve a two year term on the Board of Directors.

You may vote for a nominated candidate by clicking the box next to her or his name. Remember that you may only vote for up to five candidates total, whether using this section or the write-in area.

Write-In Area

The ballot includes a write-in area as required under our region's bylaws.

To use this section simply type the name of one or more candidates of your choosing in the space provided, using a comma (,) to separate multiple candidates if necessary.

Captcha Field

The Internet has made many things easier, including abuse. Spammers have created automated systems that scour the web looking for forums, blogs, and any other page that allows them to submit text. When they find them, they fill all available fields with marketing messages and submit as many times as possible. Unfortunately avoiding this requires an extra step from legitimate users.

A “captcha” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha) tries to prevent this abuse by presenting an image that a program cannot process, but a human being can. The image is changed every time a given page or form is displayed. The user must look at the graphic on the left, determine what letters and/or numbers are being shown, and type them into the field provided. In this case, you would need to type “FHHE” into the field in order to successfully submit your ballot.

Submitting or Clearing the Ballot

At the bottom of the form are two buttons. One will submit the completed ballot, and the other will reset the form so that you could start over if you wished.

If you are satisfied with your ballot and have entered all required information, you can click on the Submit button. If you wish to clear the form and start over, you can click on the Reset button.

Successful Submission

If you fill out your ballot and successfully submit it, you will be shown the following screen:

If you do not see this screen, your ballot has not been recorded. Please go back to the link in the email message and try again.

Unsuccessful Submission: Missing Field

Certain fields on the ballot are required. If you don't fill them in, your ballot will not be accepted. Here's the error that will be shown if you do not fill in a required field:

To proceed you must fill in the required field before using the Submit button again. If you still have trouble, go back to the email you received with the link to the ballot and start over.

Unsuccessful Submission: Bad Captcha

If you do not correctly enter the “captcha” the ballot will be redisplayed with the following error message at the top:

Make sure your selections are still in place, and try entering the letters and/or numbers from the “captcha” again before clicking on the Submit button. If you still have trouble, go back to the email you received with the link to the ballot and start over.

Other Problems

If you have other problems with the voting process, please contact the Diablo Webmaster via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , any Board member, or a member of the 2010 Election Committee.

Afterwards: Processing Ballots

The current Board of Directors is taking a number of steps to maintain the integrity of the election process. For example, the link to the ballot will not be published here or on the main website. It will only be sent directly to members' registered email addresses.

When a member submits a ballot two copies are stored. One is recorded in a database, and the other is sent immediately via electronic mail to a mailbox established and controlled by the Membership Chair on behalf of the Election Committee. This mailbox will collect a running audit trail of the entire process as members vote.

The Webmaster maintains the database of ballots since it is part of the website. He is responsible for providing a complete record of the database to the Election Committee. In addition, he will attempt to automate the filtering out of invalid ballots – but this processing will be confirmed by a group of Election Committee members.

The validated ballots will then have all personal information removed before the votes are counted by a different group of Election Committee members.

The entire process can be checked against the audit trail of individual ballots recorded by the Membership Chair.