On about the 15th of September, renewals and ballots well be mailed to the AMA membership. A very small percentage of the membership will vote. Most of the ballots that will be returned will be mailed shortly after receipt by the members.

Regardless of your choice of candidates, does anyone have any ideas on how to increase the voter turnout?

INVOLVEMENT in the issues is our method. We have a discussion planned for month's club meeting to let the membership air opinions and plan a reminder just before the elections. Since our District V election coincides with the AMA President's election we plan to get everyone involved. It also helps when the candidates are available here to voice their views!

quint

One thing that miight be done is for the officers of your club to put together a list of members and send each one of them a letter, post card, or note of some sort detailing the upcoming election(s) and whp the candidates are and urge each member to get off his duff and vote.
It may not have total effect but it should get more people involved.
Basically it is going to take a one on one approach with each member to get them out and voting.
Most of the members in my club never come to meetings or as far as that goes, to the field to fly their planes. I'm glad they continue to pay dues and all but it would be so much better if we had a larger turnout.

DeadStick aka JimRoss

Have the ballot drop off at Hooters!

JimRoss, Check your PM's please.

to be honest, an uninformed vote is worse than no vote.

so let the folks that don't know and don't wana know, live on in their bliss, and not vote.

Mongo,

That is the hidden part of the problem. The basic problem is simply voter apathy, which the incumbents love.

In the past my club has attempted to collect ballots at the October meeting and mailing them from the central post office. We even offered extra raffle tickets for each ballot turned in at that meeting. Guess how many payouts we have made. . .

i am gona guess, 0


but it is sorta an easy one to guess at.

The big question is, what's in it for the silent majority who don't vote? Politicans realize that they have to make promises to entice people to vote for them, i.e., a chicken in every pot and car in every garage philosophy. There are issues that the experienced flier has brought up but what is there the will make the average newbie (silent majority?) sit up and take notice?

CCR

The reason so few vote is because very few actually expect anything out of the AMA other than insurance. As long as the insurance covers me I could care less what else the AMA does honestly.

Unless a candidate wants to remove insurance coverage I really don't care. I've never attended an AMA sanctioned event, never visited the headquarters etc...

I know the AMA does stuff like lobbying against BPL etc... but day to day operations really have very little impact on the "average" member of the AMA. I would expect the AMA to do those things regardless of who the president is.

The most opposistion I see to Dave Brown is one rule that is currently in effect.... see what I mean.

Offer a discount on membership.

Give them something worth voting for. all this BS is getting out of hand , pollitics and Money.
Give the voter some thing to vote for. What changes can be made and who can make them. Not what we need at MUNc. We need support out side of Indiana!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the past, forums such as this one, have discussed candidates and produced information that might be important in casting an informed ballot. Trying to influence your close friends and club members, in one way or another, is the object of relaying information. Some ways have been touched on here.

Regardless of who your candidate of choice is, are any of you trying to developing any sort of grass roots movement to inform people of the issues and visions of the candidates?

Has anyone tried sending e-mails to their friends in support of candidates? Taking it a step further, has anyone tried to develop a chain letter with the information? Does this rise to the level of being spam, or is it more important to get the views of candidates out?