Reactions

American Chemical Society elections

I congratulate our recently elected national officers and thank them for their willingness to lead the society and build our future. However, three aspects of our elections greatly concern me.

1. Only 14,000 members voted, which is at best 10% if we assume that foreign members did not vote. In 1971, 39% voted! Are the remaining 90% satisfied with our direction or just would like something different? This should be thoroughly studied.

2. In the director-at-large (DAL) election, 369 councilors voted out of 487—118 did not vote! The councilors wear two hats. As dues-paying members, they have the freedom of not voting for president or district director. However, they cannot shirk their duties in the voting for DAL. Their election gave them the privilege and duty to vote for DAL. Even the past presidents, who are ex officio councilors for life, should vote. The election is conducted electronically in a period of one month; there is no excuse for not voting. The Nominations & Elections Committee (N&E) can easily determine who did not vote and at least warn them or notify the ACS units that elected them about it.

3. We use a preferential ballot for the election when there are four candidates for two positions. We stated our choices in first, second, third, and fourth orders. There are various systems to determine the winners. However, the process used by N&E has an imperfect way to resolve ties. When two candidates are tied at the end, it should not be only the number of first-place votes to break it. The decision should be based on how many times each candidate placed higher on the preference list than the other. This would be equivalent to a runoff between the two tied.

Attila E. Pavlath, 2001 ACS president
Albany, Calif.