2015 Elections!

[FANGS]

Elections will be starting on MONDAY, MARCH 16, 2015.

Got your attention now? ;-)

You may see this information in more than one location because we want to be sure that everyone is aware. Please link one of the posts on your Facebook pages so that we catch as many as possible.

The Mantle states the following for the election process:

Battalion and Regiment

• Battalion Commanding Officer (BCO) and Regiment Commanding Officer (RCO) are elected by popular vote of the active members of their respective unit.
• Executive Office and Membership Officer of Battalion and Regiment are appointed by their respective CO.
• CO may appoint other administrative positions within their unit as needed.
• Active Deployed members in good standing are eligible to run for CO.
• Deployed members are eligible to nominate and vote in elections within their currently assigned unit.
• Members that are classified as reserve, retired, suspended, or discharged may not vote unless their status has been changed back to active before voting begins. Notice of upcoming elections will be posted on the 405th.com at least one week prior to the beginning of the nomination period.
• Elections for CO positions are held once every two years.
• Elections will begin at 12:01am PST on the 1st Wednesday of January.
• Nominations will be open for 4 days beginning on Wednesday and concluding on the Saturday immediately following.
• At 12:01am PST on Sunday, a question-and-answer period begins and runs for 4 days, closing on the Wednesday immediately following.
• Commanding Officers are elected by the popular vote of the members of their unit. Voting will open Thursday following the question-and-answer period and be available for 4 days, ending on the following Sunday.
• Election results will be announced on Monday.
• The remainder of the month is reserved for transitioning between administrations. Elected candidates will take office at 12:01am PST on February 1st.
• If no one challenges an incumbent leader of a unit, an election may be waived.

For this election and this election only, things are different simply because we technically do not have any members as of yet. We are also reducing the amount of time so that we can get the elections completed by April 1st.

All Regiments are being approved. Having said that, the logos have not yet been approved. We will be contacting the CO's following the election to get that process taken care of.

Who can vote?

For this election, and this election only, any registered member who currently has access to their local regiment forum will be able to vote. Next year when our first standardized election occurs, only Tier C and Tier D members will be eligible to vote, per the Mantle. Again, we are only bending the rules this first time because we do not officially have any members in place yet. After the 2016 elections, CO elections will happen every 2 years, unless there is need to replace the current CO.

Who can be nominated?

For this election, and this election only, any registered member who currently has access to their local regiment forum can nominate anyone within their Regiment. However, for this first election, the Division staff will be vetting nominees based on activity and registration length. Also, keep in mind that only be Tier D members will be eligible for nomination in 2016.

Time period?

For this election only - each phase in the election process will be 4 days. All times are based on Pacific Standard Time.

Nominations will begin on Monday, March 16 at 12:01 a.m. They will end at 12:00 a.m. on Thursday, March 20.

Q&A will begin on Friday, March 21st at 12:01 a.m. and will end on Monday, March 23rd at 12:00 a.m.

Voting will run from Tuesday, March 24th at 12:00 a.m. to Friday, March 27th at 12:00 a.m.

The positions will officially start on Wednesday, April 1st to allow time for us to make sure the elected people have the proper permissions etc.

Rules:

Each nomination needs three parts - nomination, a second (from a different person) and acceptance by the nominated person. If it is missing any of those three, the nomination fails.

If you're going to nominate someone, please speak to them first to ensure that they wish to run.

You can nominate yourself, and you can self second a nomination for you by someone else. However, you cannot do both. The first nomination and the second must in all circumstances come from two different people, but one of those people can be the person being nominated.

The election process will happen in the members only area for each Regiment on this forum. Please tell me as soon as possible if you do not have access to this forum but believe that you should.

Any questions? Please feel free to ask!

 

[FANGS]

Just so everyone is clear - this election is for REGIMENT ONLY. We don't have any Batallions officially set up yet. We want the CO in place before we start breaking up the area in to smaller units.

 

[FANGS]

I've had a couple of questions so I'll answer them here so everyone else can see the answer.

We will be setting up threads for each phase of the election period in the Members Only area of each Regiment. We need you to make sure that if you are a member that you have access to that forum. If you do not, and you believe that you should, please send a message as soon as possible to Art Andrews.

The question and answer phase will only be used should there be more than one candidate. If there is only one person with a completed nomination at the end of that phase, they become the newly elected CO. They do not have to go through Q&A, although I strongly recommend that they post up what they would like to do for the Regiment in the coming months. If there is more than one, Q&A is used for members to ask questions to figure out which member they wish to vote for. We'll have specific rules about this, but basically no baiting or flaming or asking the same question over and over again to try and push someone to your point of view. In general, people ask things like what they are going to do to find new events for the group or how they are going to work to include people who may not be close to other members etc. There really aren't any right or wrong answers per say but it does help each of you figure out which direction is more important to you personally and therefore which member to vote for.

Once the CO's for the Regiments are in place, they are allowed to appoint staff. In the mantle it states:

Regiment Staff

Regiment Offices exist to oversee the daily local operations of the 405th at the Regiment level. Each Regiment must contain at least these three offices. The combination of these offices exist as the Regiment Staff.
Regiment Commanding Officer (RCO)

• The chief administrator of the Regiment
• Responsible for the operations of the Regiment and the coordination of events that occur within the Regiment’s boundaries
• Responsible for maintaining communications with the Division Executive Officer (DXO)
• Appoints the remaining Regiment officers, any additional staff, and administers local forum rules
• Principal representative of the Regiment membership including the Battalions under the Regiment
• Responsible for Regiment merchandise submission to the Division Identity Officer (DIO) for approval
• May delegate duties as needed, but ultimately responsible for their completion.

Regiment Executive Officer (RXO)

• Performs duties as assigned by the RCO
• Assumes leadership of the Regiment in the absence of the RCO

Regiment Membership Officer (RMO)

• Responsible for reviewing official member costume compliance
• Oversees Battalion member information

For clarification - and we're adding this to the Mantle right now - the appointed Regiment staff positions CAN be Deployed members or Auxilliary members. Of course for current time, an elected CO will be choosing their staff from people that aren't officially any kind of member just yet. That is fine for this term, but keep in mind that for a person to hold an appointed position following the 2016 elections they must be Deployed or Auxilliary.

Any other questions, please let me know!

 

[Chernobyl]

Funny thing is, there's no official UK Regimental group, so I'm not sure how the elections are going to run for that. I sent the application out for establishing the Regiment formally a few weeks back, I've had no response.

 

[Art Andrews]

Funny thing is, there's no official UK Regimental group, so I'm not sure how the elections are going to run for that. I sent the application out for establishing the Regiment formally a few weeks back, I've had no response.

Will have an answer on this shortly. BTW, I LOVE your suggested name.

 

[Chernobyl]

Will have an answer on this shortly. BTW, I LOVE your suggested name.

Excalibur? It's been on the cards for a while - I'm happy to 'take control' of the group, for want of any better way of putting it, given the lack of steering the group seems to have, but before we do any of that, I'm just noting that the official channels need to be in place.

 

[FANGS]

The application was submitted a week ago. In my original post, I said that all Regiments are being approved. We're working through some small issues with a few applications but nothing that is going to stop any from being approved. We'll have all of this wrapped up prior to Monday.

 

[Bambii]

You have not made this easy in any way

 

[Chernobyl]

You have not made this easy in any way

Define 'not easy'. This is the first time we've run elections here on the 405th, it's a brand new concept and there are likely to be a few bumps and bugs to iron out.

If you want a condensed rundown, however:

> Join Regiment
> Submit electoral vote
> ???
> Receive bacon

That's all there is to it. Bacon not guaranteed.

EDIT: I'm seeing a few questions being posed in certain Regiments, so without wishing to steal FANGS thunder:

The Regimental Elections haven't begun yet - the reason you're not seeing any means or methods for electing or voting for leaders is because we haven't started yet. Elections begin this Monday (16th March), whereupon I assume a thread in each Regiment will be created for the purposes of nominating. One week later (Tuesday 24th March), voting will open and run until Friday 27th March, to allow people to vote for the proposed electives.

That any more clear, peeps?

 

[SPARTAN II]

[...]

EDIT: I'm seeing a few questions being posed in certain Regiments, so without wishing to steal FANGS thunder:

The Regimental Elections haven't begun yet - the reason you're not seeing any means or methods for electing or voting for leaders is because we haven't started yet. Elections begin this Monday (16th March), whereupon I assume a thread in each Regiment will be created for the purposes of nominating. One week later (Tuesday 24th March), voting will open and run until Friday 27th March, to allow people to vote for the proposed electives.

That any more clear, peeps?

To further expand on that point, as FANGS mentioned early on in Post #3, threads will be set up for each phase of the election period in the "Members Only" area of each regiment.

As such, you all need to make sure that you have access to those sub-forums. Otherwise, you can't be part of the election process.

Total bummer about the bacon, btw. Have to say, I'm feeling a little let down with that. I was really hoping for some bacon

 

[Chernobyl]

HP sauce is for Christmas. Bacon is forever.

 

[FANGS]

Mmmmm.....Bacon!

Thunder you can steal....but never bacon. Never, ever bacon.

 

[Dagger06]

You have not made this easy in any way

If you have any questions about the process, or even just the next step, please let us know!

For your case, I believe you need to get registered under a regiment and get forum access. If you need any help accomplishing this, just let us know what region you plan to participate in and we can put you in touch with their forum manager. =)

 

[FANGS]

You have not made this easy in any way

I'm not at all sure how we could have made this easier, but I certainly welcome all constructive comments about what we could do differently for next time.

 

[whereisdanielle]

FANGS
A lot of people were very confused about where and when to vote because you directly said when you linked in our Australian facebook group that elections were open. I can quote you on that.
And this is where the whole not made things easy come in. You've said about 90 different things in 90 different places so to find answers we have to dig for them. Easy would have been one mega master post that was continuously edited to display correct and all information as well as not posting false information in our facebook group. You also didn't explain anything in your facebook post you just ordered people to go click the link. I understand you want traffic here on the 405th, so make a mega post here that is simple, to the point and can be understood by all ages that contains ALL the information and then link that to the facebook group instead of causing mass confusion that actually ate up a good 6 hours of my time trying to clear up for members.

What we needed from the start was a condensed run down like what Chernobyl gave. Theres no need to make things more complicated than they are. And I understand that of course there are going to be issues with the first ever election, thats the nature of everything. It will get smoother and easier with time.

Communication is key.

 

[Chernobyl]

What we needed from the start was a condensed run down like what Chernobyl gave.

True story: minus the part about greasy fried/grilled porcine cuisine, my post was pretty much a gutted version of FANGS initial post. I'll admit, seven or eight identical threads sort of went against my own personal better judgement, and I'll agree that one single master post might have been a better way to go about things - but. The information you needed is all in the initial post, even if it did need watering down for the general public.

Regardless: I hope that there are some reasonably-less-twisted knickers on show now that things have been made more clear.

 

[whereisdanielle]

[.....]my post was pretty much a gutted version of FANGS initial post. [.....] The information you needed is all in the initial post, even if it did need watering down for the general public.

Regardless: I hope that there are some reasonably-less-twisted knickers on show now that things have been made more clear.

We only even needed that information given like that. People don't necessarily want to sit through a wall of text to find out something they could have been told in less than a paragraph. Just trying to help make this even simpler and smother here.

My knickers were never twisted, people just seem to be making everything 8 times more complicated than things need to be and I'm trying to get you all to realise this.
If you want things to run smoothly first time, make it stupidly easy to understand and do.

 

[Dagger06]

I agree. Having just the basic information required this specific election up front, with the rest of the details available if people felt like scrolling down, would have been better.

Remember most people rarely go past the headlines, so having the information that was most pertinent to the immediate election being at the bottom was very inconvenient, and many people seemed to get overloaded by the initial wall of text. I know for the Pacific I ended up making a simplified info post.

 

[whereisdanielle]

I know for the Pacific I ended up making a simplified info post.

I had to do the same for the Australian Regiment

 

[Jason 078]

> Join Regiment
> Submit electoral vote
> ???
> Receive bacon

As long as step 3 isn't "steal underwear" then I'm good.