Author: Bitter

I’ve been told by successfully elected NRA board candidates that the data & explanations I provide about how NRA elections work and what it takes to win are actually pretty useful. So, if you’d like to see a change made to the NRA Board of Directors, here’s a peek at what it takes to help your preferred candidate win.

For those of you who are a little confused by my terminology, it is based on how directors are elected.  There are 25 seats up every year on the mailed ballot.  There are typically around 30 or so nominees, but only the top 25 of them will receive a seat on the board.  (There were 37 nominees this year, a higher number than usual.)  By “top winner,” I mean the person who earned the most votes.  By “last winner,” I mean the person who had the least number of votes, but still enough to win one of the 25 seats available.

This year, the top vote-getter was on 91% of the valid ballots.  Considering that exactly 3 years prior, the number was similarly high, it’s not hard to guess that this year’s top winner was once again Tom Selleck.  The final person to actually win a board seat was on almost 56% of the valid ballots. In raw numbers, that means that in order to serve on the board, candidates had to earn at least 53,029 votes this year. (This is actually the second lowest number of votes needed to win since I’ve been keeping track, typically the number is closer to 60,000 votes.)

The difference between the last winner and the “first loser” (for lack of a better term) was just 866 votes this year. Here are the candidates who did not win a seat and the number of votes between them and the next person in line.

*Elected as 76th Director to serve a term of one year. The election process for this seat happens at Annual Meeting & is open to all NRA members.

You can see where encouraging any friends and family members who can vote to support your favorite candidates can easily pay off in boosting numbers. You don’t have to convince all 4 million members of NRA to support your guy or gal in order to make a difference in the election.

Ah, it’s time for the annual peek at how NRA members are participating in their elections. And this year, the data gets a little more interesting. But just a little. It’s still ridiculously easy for members to get their ballots in and actually influence elections. Let’s get on with the pretty charts.

The y-axis should say that the numbers are in the millions, but after battling with Excel and Google which have both altered their charts just enough to make it a pain in the neck, I figured you fine folks were smart enough to figure that out.

So, why were fewer ballots mailed out? Is NRA shedding massive numbers of life members or 5+ year members? While I don’t have direct access to data, I’m going to go ahead and rule that out. The fact that an even number of ballots went out indicates at least the beginnings of a membership list cleaning operation – putting real effort into finding out who is alive, who moved, etc. Every organization has to do it periodically, and timing to when you have to mail out ballots makes the most sense. One of NRA’s biggest expenses is mailing out the magazines to nearly 4 million members, it gets more expensive when you add stuff to it like the ballots.

I make my assumption with some evidence to back it up. The number of ballots that came back was actually the third highest since I started keeping records, and the number of invalid ballots (those with mistakes) is on par with previous years as well. Those numbers did not see a proportional drop.

Because of the drop in number of mailed ballots, the participation rate went up. Since it’s unlikely the dead people were voting, this makes sense. This isn’t Chicago, after all.

When I emphasize that it’s, in theory, ridiculously easy to influence the election, it’s totally based on the fact that so few eligible members actually vote. If the majority of Snowflakes in Hell readers are voting-eligible members of NRA and every one voted, they alone could throw the participation rate up to 10% based on this year’s numbers. In that spirit, if you do receive an NRA ballot and choose not to vote, I’d be curious as to why you don’t vote in the association election.

Because I couldn’t find the voting statistics outside of the NRA Annual Meeting this year (had to run out early to cover the protest), I didn’t do much follow up on the new board members beyond who was actually at the board meeting the following Monday.

I assumed, very wrongly, that Erik Estrada was a top vote-getter who was simply blowing off the organization once he won. I’m not as opposed to celebrities on the board as others, but I do believe that part of what they “bring” to the board in that case is a willingness to at least be known as an actual sworn-in member of the board. (Unlike, say, Karl Malone who, as I understand it, has never even shown up to be sworn in as a board member, never mind even try to symbolically attend a meeting and pretend to give a damn since I’ve been going to these things.)

Anyway, I’m glad I never posted about it because it turns out that Estrada did the right thing. He would have come in sixth place by votes, however, according to the report from the Secretary, he contacted NRA to let them know that his schedule would no longer allow him to participate. So he actually withdrew from the election. Seriously, kudos and applause all around for him doing the responsible thing.

This year, that effort is especially noteworthy because we lost some very experienced board members who bring unique skills to the board. I cannot tell you how many people on the board, on staff, and who are just highly involved in the organization were lamenting the loss of seriously dedicated and talented board members, partially due to the sheer number of celebrities up in one year. With Estrada actually withdrawing from the election, it means that the next highest vote-getter was elevated to the top 25 winners. It helped ease some of the displacement issues.

I figure it’s worth mentioning when someone does the right thing. Tomorrow’s topic: how NRA members participate in the elections. There were actually measurable differences this year, but not for reasons you might think.