November/December 2009: AOA House of Delegates Voting Procedure

Editor:

I purposely waited until now to write this letter dealing with POA’s voting its delegate strength at Optometry’s Meeting so that this important issue would not get confused with the actual voting at the last congress on Board Certification. The subjects are totally unrelated but the BC issue did trigger and expose a problem that, in my opinion at least, needs full discussion and solving.

In my 64 years of membership in POA and AOA, I have been privileged to attend at least 55 AOA congresses, being a delegate at most. It has been standard operating procedure for the POA delegation to decide as the very first order of business at the very first caucus how the state’s delegate vote would be cast.

As usual, our state at Optometry’s Meeting in Washington in June had more delegate strength than it had members attending as official delegates. Unfortunately, no determination was made on how to divide the vote fairly and equitably. There are a number of options and it is up to each state to decide for itself what option to use.  This is no different from national elections for the President of the United States.

Option one is for members of the delegation present to vote in the caucus and the prevailing side captures all of the votes (this is called the unit rule); option two has the delegates vote in the caucus and the vote count of the association is divided in the percentage that is reflected by that vote; and option three, called the Van Essen modification, has the delegates vote in the caucus and the prevailing side of that vote captures all of the unvoted delegates. Both options two and three make sure that no one is disenfranchised and every vote is recorded.

Personally, I prefer option two particularly after the last congress when at least two delegates said to me that it was patently unfair not to be asked to vote in the caucus so their feelings could be registered.

In these days where democracy is threatened around the world and where voting is a right as well as a privilege we must not in our own organization quash dissent by restricting voting. However, having said that I would ask the POA to establish a rule governing the voting of delegates at Optometry’s Meeting or, at least, require the delegation at the meetings to determine as the first order of business the rules that will govern the casting of the POA delegate vote.

The status quo is not acceptable.

Irving Bennett, O.D.
Beaver Falls