Even One Can Make a Difference
This month, voting will begin for selecting the new officers and directors who will lead International CHRIE in the next coming years. Please exercise your right as an ICHRIE member and cast your vote for our future leaders. The voting form is easy to use and takes less than a minute or two. Okay, it’s probably more than a couple of minutes if you take the time to read the platform statements and biographical information provided by the candidates—but the voting system is designed so voting can be completed quickly.
Members don’t realize the importance of every single vote. If you don’t think that your vote really matters, then you need to hear how untrue that thinking is! Since I’ve been with ICHRIE, there have been several years when the winning candidate won by a margin of less than FIVE votes! There was even one year the winning candidate won by only ONE vote!! It is always surprising—given the total number of members that we have—that so many ICHRIE elections are decided by such a small margin.
Former U.S. Congressman, Walter Henry Judd stated, “People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote—a very different thing.”
We have almost 1,400 members and yet traditionally we only get between 20 and 30 percent of the total membership who vote in ICHRIE elections. I’ve heard that some members don’t bother to vote because they think it’s just a big popularity contest or they don’t vote because they think it’s going to be a landslide for one particular candidate. Trust me when I tell you that there has NEVER been a landslide result unless you count the few times when there was only one candidate running in a particular position. So, I’m strongly encouraging every ICHRIE member to take a few minutes and help us decide who will lead us in the future.
By voting for our future leaders you also show support for their willingness to serve. Anyone who has served on the ICHRIE board will tell you in heartbeat that once they were elected they discovered quickly—and sometimes painfully—just how much time, attention and work is involved in serving in an unpaid “volunteer” position. And we definitely owe the schools and companies who employ our board members a huge debt of thanks for their willingness to support the amount of time and work involved.
The voting process runs for sixty days from February 1 to March 31. You will receive several reminders—via this newsletter; our Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages; and our broadcast messaging system to remind you to cast your vote. Best-selling author Louis L’Amour stated that, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” So go vote now!
Kathy McCarty
kmccarty@chrie.org