My Brothers,

      I wish to express my thanks to you for accepting the use of a single ballot in our State Council elections. I believe this is an important step in modernizing and making more efficient the time spent on electing our new State Council Officers, State Financial Advisors and Supreme Convention delegates. 

      This was an attempt to try out a straw single ballot system. Use of the new ballot took very little time to explain and utilize (~5-10 minutes). Once we use it again next year, I believe this time will be reduced. Collection of the completed ballots went perfectly. Unfortunately, the Registration process for certifying delegates did not go well. I know that our State Officers and the Convention Committee will address this matter and come up with a more efficient process to use. Had the Registration process gone as it has in many past years, I believe the election would have been completed in no more than 10-15 minutes. This would have saved 75 minutes from our Business meeting schedule.

     As a counter along with PSD Glenn Camley and DD Brian Lavalley, once given the go ahead to start counting the ballots, the process was very efficient and likely took ~10-12 minutes to complete. This year we used new, special Tally sheets to record all vote counts. I'm glad to announce that they worked very well. Counting ballots the old way with many slips of colored paper took about the same time (~10-12mins) for each vote. So if we had to count separate ballots for Supreme delegates(2 votes), backups for those delegates(2 votes) and Fin. Advisors(1 vote) we would have spent 5 X 10mins = 50 minutes counting. So this was an improvement as well.

     I know that change is difficult. We all are more comfortable with the way we did things in the past. This is human nature! But change even in small steps is what makes us grow and improve. So I appreciate your willingness to try this new process and appreciate all your candid feedback on the Convention Survey. We will continue to accept new ideas for improvement to this process.

Again Thank you for your willingness to be part of this positive change!

Thanks and God Bless
Greg
Greg Taillon, PSD
State Training & Development Director, Co-State Webmaster
NH State Council, Knights of Columbus
603-382-7239  G.Taillon at Comcast dot net