Coming Soon: RCA Online Voting

On Monday, we had our monthly RCA Board meeting.  At the meeting, we discussed a number of exciting new initiatives that we're moving forward.  I'm sure I'll be telling you about many of them in this space in the coming weeks.

But perhaps our most complex project is one that will directly affect you.  We're changing the way we do our voting.  RCA is joining the 21st century, and making it easier than ever for you to cast your vote in our Board elections.

For at least the last decade, RCA has held its elections at the Reston Festival.  This has worked pretty well for us, but we've had several concerns about it.  It's not easy to convince people to vote at the Festival; people who attend are typically there to have a good time, not to cast ballots.  Also, the Festival falls in July, when many Restonians are out of town.  If folks are out of town when the Festival occurs, they were out of luck when it came time to vote.  And finally, there's a very real possibility that the this year.

Given all of these factors, we decided that it was time to look at other options for holding our elections.  We noted that other community organizations, like RCC and RA, have had success holding their elections online, and they've seen much higher turnout as a result.  Given those examples, we decided to do the same thing at RCA.

However, unlike RCC and RA, we don't have the resources to hire an outside firm to conduct our voting process.  So we're doing things the RCA way: with elbow grease and a cadre of smart, dedicated volunteers.

Our volunteers on this are a collection of Board members who have done a great deal in a short time.  The Election Committee members (Diane Lewis, CJ Basik, and Debra Eastham) have been working diligently to design the election materials and define the ground rules for our new format.  They've been advised by our technical liaison, Gary Walker, to make sure that all the key questions are answered. 

Once they're done, Gary and our IT Committee (Hank Blakely, Sridhar Ganesan, and Donovan D'Souza) will go to work designing the voting website.  We'll be testing it over the next month, making sure that it does everything we need it to. And then, once it's ready and the bugs are ironed out, we will roll it out and hold our first online election this summer.

Online voting offers a number of advantages.  You don't have to brave the summer heat to come to the Festival and seek out our booth.  You can vote in the privacy and comfort of your home, your office, or anywhere else with Internet access.  And rather than holding the entire election on a weekend, we'll have a two-week window to cast ballots.  Off on a weekend getaway?  No problem -- you can vote after you get back, or before you go.  And the ease of voting should boost turnout, just as it has for RCC and RA.  More of our citizens than ever will be able to make their voices heard.

And for those of you who don't feel comfortable with online voting, don't worry; you'll still have the chance to cast your ballot by mail.

The new online voting system is the first of many changes that will be happening to the RCA website in the coming months.  Gary and our IT crew will be working to make the website your one-stop shop for all things RCA.  I look forward to telling you about these new features as we unveil them.

I'll let you know more about our elections, including the candidate filing dates and the election dates themselves, as we get closer.  But if you're committed to your community and you want to get more involved, now's the time to start thinking about running for the RCA Board. 

We're looking forward and thinking ahead.  We've been shaping and advancing the community conversation on issues like the .  We're expanding our issue portfolio, so that we can stand up and represent Restonians on even more subjects that matter.  And we're strengthening our foundation, making ourselves into a 21st-century organization so that we can help lead Reston toward its future.

RCA's greatest strength has always been its people, and by serving on the Board, you'll have the chance to shape the future of Reston.  If that sounds like something that interests you, get ready.  I hope to see your name on our new online ballot this summer.