Tuesday, April 4, 2017

A Reminder Regarding NRA Board Elections


This is a reminder for NRA Life Members and 5-Year Members (5 years continuous membership). You should have received your official ballot for the NRA Board of Directors in your February 2017 issue of the American Rifleman, American Hunter, or other official NRA magazine. Ballots must be in the hands of Deloitte and Touche by April 9th. Given that is a Sunday and mail isn't delivered on Sundays, your ballot actually has to be received by Saturday. In other words, get them in the mail now!

My post of February 8th had a round-up on endorsements. You might want to use that as reference. In general I would advise to vote for only a handful of candidates.  I personally only voted for five people. Skip the celebs who don't need our votes anyway.

One of the people for whom I voted, Todd Rathner, posted on Facebook today that he had been notified that he had been re-elected. I hope he is correct because he has done great work on the advancement of knife rights.

Another of the candidates whom I supported, Willes Lee, sent me a note yesterday saying he had gotten a letter from the NRA telling him that 5-6 people including himself were fighting it out for the last three spots on the Board. Willes is a petition-nominated candidate and will be depending on grassroots support.

Others whom I consider deserving of your support include Adam Kraut, Graham Hill, Sean Maloney, and Stephen Stamboulieh. While I didn't vote for Mr. Stamboulieh, I would note that he is working with the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Firearms Policy Foundation to take the fight to cities that would ban non-lethal weapons such as stun guns.  People from the grassroots whom I highly respect such as Jeff Knox and David Codrea have included one or more of these people in their recommendations.

As to the bylaw changes, I hope you vote NO. While some of the changes are needed, it is an all or nothing package vote and there are some changes that just are not favorable to the grassroots.

If you have already voted, you have my thanks. If you have yet to vote, go on it! Time's a wastin'.

5 comments:

  1. If the election is still open, why are people being notified of their election? Is this some sort of rolling admissions process? Major disincentive to vote if so.

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    1. Excellent point. I don't know the rationale behind it.

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  2. I read somewhere while reading about the candidates that the average turnout of votes in the NRA election is 1% of eligible members. 1%! That's really pretty sad.

    Could it be that their number or percentage of votes is so high that they don't expect enough votes to change it, based on that history?

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  3. Hi John, browsing and found these unanswered questions. Hope it is alright to weigh in w readers. For gunculture2pointo: it is a math thing, and service to give those 'on the bubble' a chance. When votes are tabulated it becomes obvious, from previous years, that a number, say the top 22, have enough votes to be elected regardless the remaining votes projected to be received by deadline, and once they are notified they are not restricted from saying so. Likewise, the bottom, say past #29 have no chance to be elected. Those six-seven on the bubble have a little less than a week to get voters to boost them into contention. I don't know stats of whether anything ever changes in that last 5-6 days. Hope this answers your query.

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  4. Sorry the delay, just founds this comment and question from before. Recent history pegs the number of votes received at about 7% eligible. Yes, pretty sad especially considering as a voting block in public elections, #2A people are pretty consistent ... and that we spend so much time bitching about NRA board. So, yes, based on history of a pretty consistent 7%+/- a tad, apparently vote tabulators have a good estimate of the remaining number of votes ... and that they won't change the top, or bottom, vote getters. Hope this answers your question. Thanks. Willes Lee NRA Board (thanks to all of you who did vote).

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