USAT Elections... a look at the numbers

Triathlon Forum
1

There have been many comments and threads in the past few weeks regarding the current election and what did or didn’t happen during the previous election.

I’ve also seen numerous posts from individuals wondering who to vote for or “why would I vote for Locke over Gattis, or vote Burke over Kidder and Weiss”.

Unfortunately, aside from taking a hard stance for or against a candidate, there is little one can do to demystify the current election. One thing that I found helpful for me was to look over the documents pertaining to the grievence filed against Gattis, Girand and Travis. All of the information is readily available on the bottom of the first page of USAT’s website.

I read through these materials, the complaint, the exhibits, the defense briefs and exhibits and it is definitely an eye opener. For anyone who is undecided, it is definitely worth at least a glance.

One of the things that caught my attention was contained in the defenses’ exhibit material and it was the results of elections from 1995-present. Being the curious sort that I am, I contacted USAT to get membership numbers for the same timeframe. Here is what I found:

Year Annual members Ballots cast Ballots as a %

1995 15,620 2,971 19.0%

1996 14,777 579 3.9

1997 14,827 1,495 10.1

1998 16,461 858 5.2

1999 19,060 583 3.1

2000 21,341 411 1.9

2001 29,886 1,751 5.9

2002 40,729 878 2.2

2003 45,794 3,344 7.3

To me it is extremely interesting to see the voter turnout drop off significantly in 1997 to 1998 and again from 1998 to 1999. I’m not sure historically why that might have occurred, but since then it has remained relatively low until 2001 where it peaked again.

Looking back historically, many of the same candidates that ran for the last election in 2003 also ran two years earlier in 2001. Below are the results of the contested 2003 election compared side by side with the 2001 election:

   Year 2003                                        Year 2001

Western Region Western Region

Candidate Votes Candidate Votes

Jim Girand 852 Jim Girand 646

John Duke 430 Celeste Callahan 62

                                                  Perry Toles            56

Central Region Central Region

Jack Weiss 526 Valerie Gattis 267

Lew Kidder 422 Dave Rainey 114

Bill Burke 189

Eastern Region Eastern Region

Diane Travis 330 Diane Travis 286

Rob Vigorito 262 Jon Adamson 207

Tom Ziebart 100 Alisa Wright-Colopy 85

                                                  Ed Morris              19

At-Large At-Large

Valerie Gattis 1,270 Karen Buxton 805

Mike Greer 783 Jose Valdez 200

Karen Buxton 480

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions…

2

Pitiful!

If you don’t vote, you got what you deserved!

It’s obvious, age-groupers don’t care about their national federation.

-Robert

3

“It’s obvious, age-groupers don’t care about their national federation.”

well, yes and no. i don’t think it’s entirely up to the members to screw up concern and care for these elections. it’s also up to the federation and its candidates to cause them to care. let’s consider so many of the platform statements:

• introduce programs to increase the number of sactioned races
• work to make usat races safer

is that an engaging set of proposals? what do they mean? are they destined to fire up the base, and challenge the members to action?

perhaps you can see a little what lew and i were up to when we conceived of the idea of annual elections. let’s make these candidates work to get your vote! let’s keep issues near the front of everybody’s brains! a year ago you said you wanted to make races safer. what did you do… exactly? are they safer?

and then of course the petition. of everything that has happened during this election season, pre, post, and during, back in february i had my most meaningful exchange. i was in colorado springs, and i spoke to david backer on the telephone. he said, “i saw your petition, and it put a big smile on my face.”

“oh,” i replied, “you liked what was in the petition.”

“i don’t know,” he answered. “i haven’t read it yet. i’m just glad somebody is finally using the tools put in place for the members when the bylaws were written.”

we have a really neat sport. we can have a lot of fun. the sky’s the limit.

4

One reason 2002 was so low was Brad Davison ran unopposed in the Central a big vote getting region when there is some interest.

Bob Sigerson

5

Well, we have no structured or unstructured accountability for these board members. They aren’t asked those questions by Tim Russert on a Sunday morning with 10 million people watching. But, since their platforms are mostly GOOEY HOOEY they couldn’t be held accountable. Race directors get elected all the time because they have name recognition, not because they have a vision for the future of our sport. They haven’t promised to end drafting, or ensure that all the water we swim in is safe, or that all bike course turns are swept, yada yada yada.

Until we hold their feet to the fire, board members will have few incentives to move our sport forward in ALL respects. How will this election be much different? We’ll see. :slight_smile:

-Robert