Election of Officers mid-year

[Skojo]

With our dept annual elections coming up, we're running into a scenario that we've never seen before. All members have annual minimum qualifications that need to be met prior to running for firematic office in our annual elections. Our quals are a mix of drill attendance, dept meeting/event participation, and completion of specific state classes.

We have two fellas that are interested in running for two vacant LT positions, but do not meet all of the min quals. They've asked if they have to wait another year and then run at our annual elections in 2014 or if they can run mid-year once those min quals are met. One of the fellas said that if he was able to run for office mid-year, he wanted to know if he had to meet all of the annual min quals needed to run for office OR if he had to just get those min quals he's currently lacking for this year's elections.

We usually defer to our bylaws for stuff like this, but they don't address running for office mid-year. Just wondering if anyone has been in a similar situation and what you're dept did. I searched through older posts and didn't find anything relevant. My personal take on this is that if you want to run for office, you should have met any requirements for office at the time of election. For example, if you want to run for office in Sept or Nov, you should have met the min quals back in April (when the elections are regularly scheduled). I appreciate any thoughts you might have. Thanks!

Skojo

[tree68]

Our requirements are annual, but the way things fall, we really can't do anything unless they haven't been active for a year.

If others are qualified and want the jobs, they should run. If you don't have anyone and don't fill the positions, then I suppose a mid-year election could be held.

You might want to take a look at adjusting your by-laws. I'm not one for changing the by-laws every time something crops up, but if there's ambiguity, it can't hurt to tighten the language. We just did a change in our by-laws which introduced a response requirement. The secretary is responsible for posting each member's responses on a quarterly basis, so they can see where they stand. It's really the same as you'll find in LOSAP programs.