2011 IfA Council Elections

[Dinosaur]

My student union had a default 're-open nominations' if none of the candidates for the post got more than a certain percentage of the available votes - although on that basis I suppose there wouldn't be any council members at IFA....

[Marcus Brody]

My student union had a default 're-open nominations' if none of the candidates for the post got more than a certain percentage of the available votes - although on that basis I suppose there wouldn't be any council members at IFA....

To be honest, I'm quite surprised that anyone was ever elected to your student union on the basis of that rule, either! Given the 4% response to the IFA election, god only knows how many times you'd have to re-run the process to get an acceptably high percentage (particularly given that those who have voted would probably get fed up of being continually asked to vote again and again, until enough people decided to join in). Provided that all members had the chance to vote, all you can do is count the votes actually cast and use that as the basis of the result. Yes, I think it would have been better if more members of the IFA should have voted, but as I'm not a member, I'm not really in much of a position to criticise them for apathy.

[Dinosaur]

I believe I still hold the record at a single meeting for being beaten by RON for 18 posts

[I'd stood for everything going to annoy the exec (which included a goldfish at the time, says it all really) by stringing out what otherwise would have been quite a short meeting -but then some people have enough sense to take a crate of beer in with them }]

- but you're right, they'd all been vacant for quite a while (some may still be, 30years on), I'd had to do quite a lot of research to find out how many I could put in a nomination for

[Wax]

So the organisation that would like to see it's self at the fore front of getting archaeology recognised as a charted profession and sees itself as representing British archaeologists can only get 4% of it's members to vote for the committee. Correct me if I am wrong but there is something fundamentally not right here.

[Dinosaur]

Sinking in slowly, is it?

[Dirty Boy]

Back in the days when I was a young, fresh digger and a member of the IFA, I remember getting through the voting forms and the various bits on the candidates, and still wondering who the people seeking election were. A paragraph on each wasn't really enough to describe who they were or what they would do or differentiate themselves from anyone else in the running.

Perhaps the lack of knowledge or engagement with members in the run-up to an election is part of the problem?

[Wax]

Sinking in slowly, is it?

Not slowly, sunk in years ago, just confirming all my pre existing prejudices against the IFA}

Which is a shame because I would like to believe in them

[Martin Locock]

The pre-election posts on this thread and its predecessor indicated that the common prejudices about IfA was that council was bound to be dominated by heads of ROs and the presence of lowly diggers and others on Council would be against the will of the membership who would prefer candidates happy with the status quo. The elections have showed that neither of these views were correct. I do feel that postal voting is an outdated and cumbersome method, but I am not convinced that new techniques would make a big difference. Does failure to vote invalidate IfA membership? No. The members who didn't vote may have been busy doing other things, such as updating their mandatory CPD log, or attending training, running or attending Special Interest Group meetings, or reading new guidance. If only 4% were following the principles in the Code of Conduct, I'd be very worried.

The AGM also approved the move towards chartership.

[kevin wooldridge]

The AGM also approved the move towards chartership.

I fully support the IfA ambition of attaining Chartered status and was pleased to see the resolution passed without opposition. But I feel that such a massive potential change to the status of archaeologists has to take the members of the profession with it. If we can't even convince 5% of the committed membership to vote on such important issues, what chance is there of gaining the support of sceptical non-members...?

I remember a similar situation when RAO status was introduced and I was one of the few IfA members to express doubts at a meeting at the IfA cionference. In the end I was (ever gullible!!) convinced to stifle my objections with the reassurance from at least 2 council members 'Let us get the thing up and running and then we can deal with the 'fallout' once we have the archaeological organisations tied in'......Still waiting.

I just have a feeling that unless the IfA introduce a 'minimum voting quota' on at least some issues and methods of maximising the voting potential, then the system is open to exploitation by those who can most gain advantage from voter apathy ....

[P Prentice]

we are inherantly lazy and much prefer it when somebody else is doing the donkey work - this applies to standing for election, finding out about candidates in an election and voting in an election - but that dosent mean that we dont have an eye for the result of an election

we can quite easily sit back and know that the causes we believe in will be implemented by those others that can be bothered to do the monkeywork.