In the 2015 Essendon Board elections there were about 40,000 members who were eligible to vote.
Less than 3,000 members voted.
For some this may not be a concern. For me I do have some concerns:
Basically my view is that community groups, Political, Union or Sporting Clubs are best run, can deal with change and has the best chance of continues success if a majority of members are activity engaged in the democratic process available.
I asked the club for some information and their response is:
“In terms of voting, we have researched the demographics of those that vote and find that proportionately it is the older demographic of member that votes in the elections. Voting numbers also seem to be reduced when the member base is not seeking change. Additionally, our voting patterns are similar to that of other AFL clubs
We continue to promote the elections to our member base, through mail, website and EDMs”
In general, I think this response is reasonable, however I would like to see if there are other reasons and if there is something the club could be doing to improve the percentage who vote for example encourage younger members to vote.
This post is not meant as a discussion on my views about participation is right or wrong, nor is it meant for comments about why members did or did-not vote.
With this in mind I have prepared a survey on Survey Monkey and can be accessed via this web address, just cut and paste.
This post is being sent on 18 Essendon supporter sites
I plan to leave the survey open to the end of the 2016 season.
I will NOT be submitting additional posts to this one, rather once a month I will bump this post in order to remind potential responders or catch others who may have missed seeing the post before.
My appeal is ONLY to the Financial Members who were eligible to vote and chose not to vote.
If I get enough of a response to the survey by the end of the 2016 season I will publish the results and try to place some analysis to the answers.
If I don’t get enough responses, then it’s just a bit of my time wasted.
So I hope that Financial Members who did-not to vote will respond.
You don’t need to leave your personal details.
Again the web address to the survey is:
Other clubs would have similar results I’d suspect. Nearly 10% of members voted. If voting wasn’t compulsory in government elections I reckon you would also see a similar result, I know our local council election this year was won by a bloke with under 400 votes. A lot of people just can’t be arsed voting