Every year in May, Toastmaster clubs must hold an election to confirm the officers for the upcoming year.
Meadowvale Toastmasters under the guidance of the past-President Brayden Rankin, hosted their annual election. This excellent election took the whole meeting time and left no time for table-topics that were penciled into the agenda. This long meeting reflects the most amazing election the club has had in years.
The club has successfully nominated and elected candidates every year since its inception. In many instances, all roles had a single nominee accept the nomination who in turn were acclaimed into the role. In recent years the election would take less than a half an hour to run through the nominations and vote on one role.
Election 2024 was special…
Once quorum was confirmed the fun began with 6 people being nominated for the role of President. Five of the nominees declined to stand for election leaving the current VP – Membership as the sole nominee to be acclaimed into the role of President. The President-Elect did a short two-minute speech about her enthusiasm to lead our club to President’s Distinguished level and to help all members achieve their personal goals.
Building on the enthusiasm to nominate members for roles, VP-Education had 9 nominees. Three nominees accepted the nomination and delivered their 2-minute election speech to earn the vote of the members.
A different 9 members were nominated for the role of VP – Membership and this time 2 members accepted the nomination. VP – Public Relations had the same numbers with 9 nominations and 2 accepting the nominations.
Treasurer and Secretary both had 2 people stand in front of the membership to state their case. Treasurer had 4 nominations, while the Secretary had 6 nominations.
Sergeant-At-Arms had all nominees accept the nomination so we had 3 more speeches.
VP – Mentorship is a club level role not recognized by Toastmasters and is included in the club election. This last role had 12 nominees with 5 people accepting the nominations.
After every speech the members completed a secret ballot that had two members count outside the room. When the Chair of the election accepted a nomination the current President – Tina Kodavatiganti stepped in to chair that part of the meeting. And when one of the counters accepted a nomination, another membership stepped into assist with the counting of the votes.
The enthusiasm in the room throughout this election was positive and electric. The club officers also know who was curious about their role and have members that will be easy to recruit as volunteers to assist them throughout the year. Most importantly, we saved the nomination lists for next year’s election so we have candidates to mentor throughout the year.
Nominations for club officer roles has definitely energized Meadowvale Toastmasters.
Created by Cheryl Rankin, Public Relations Manager, District 86 2023-2025, Meadowvale Toastmasters