Nomination, Election, Re-Election of Board Directors & Functional Committee

1. The Association should establish and publicize a fair and transparent mechanism in the nomination and election process of Board Directors and functional committee members. Nomination and election procedures may differ for the Board of Directors and functional committees, but both should comply with the principle of transparency and ethics. The entire process and the result should be documented, and the information should be made available to the Board of Directors and relevant stakeholders as appropriate.

2. Election mechanism needs to set up clear eligibility criteria as stipulated in the Articles of Association and/or any other resolutions/decisions made by the Board of Directors such as experience, qualifications, contributions, attendance to Association events/competitions, etc. Once they are set up, the Association shall publicize the nomination process that includes channels, deadlines, independent oversight, and the announcement of appointment. To ensure fairness, all members of the Association, as far as practicable, should be given the rights to nominate candidates, to be nominated and to vote for the final candidates using a secure and unbiased voting system.

3. The Association may select the method of nomination and election that are deemed as appropriate for the roles. Yet, it must be ensured that all nominations are made on merit in line with the qualifications and skills required by the Board of Directors and functional committees. The Association therefore needs to prepare a detailed list and descriptions of each position and specify nominating and voting rights of the members.

4. The Board of Directors should appoint a designated staff or an Election Committee for receiving nominations and reviewing their eligibilities after they have declared conflicts of interest.

5. The designated staff or Election Committee should verify the eligibility of voters and proxies (e.g. checking of membership status against the register of members, conduct authenticity check on appointed proxies) before casting of vote.

6. Board of Directors

a) The nomination guidelines and procedures for Board Directors should include:

Eligibility of nomination and being nominated
Qualification, background, expertise and personal attributes required for nominee should be determined in advance. This is to ensure that nominee has the appropriate knowledge and skill set to be elected as a Board Director (i.e., it is suggested that Association should appoint at least one Board Director with appropriate professional qualifications or related experience, such as legal, accounting or financial expertise). Proper eligibility requirement of nominator should be defined to ensure only registered members of the Association are entitled to nominate candidates.

Eligibility of voters
The eligibility requirements of voters and their voting rights should be defined. Common considerations in assessing whether a person is eligible to vote includes membership status, age and mental capacity, etc.

Responsible person for handling nominations
Appropriate personnel should be deployed to handle the nominations, including but not limited to the collection of nominations and preparation of the candidates list.

Timeline on call for nominations
Reasonable timeline of the nominations should be given and publicized to ensure nominators have sufficient time to tender their nominations.

Declaration of interest
To ensure the nomination process is objective and fair, procedures for declaration of potential conflict of interest by the personnel who involves in the nomination process should be established.

b) The election guidelines and procedures for Board Directors shall include:

• Ballot list
The Association should prepare a ballot list to offer the voters with details on each candidate’s background, experience and goals.

• Voting method
The Association should determine the voting method of the election, common examples of the voting method include vote by show of hands or by paper ballot.

• Definition of invalid vote
Invalid vote such as ballot with no markings or unclear intentions should be defined in advance to determine whether it would be voided.

• Dealing with equal vote
The Association should establish a procedure to deal with the situation of two or more nominees getting equal vote that are eligible to be elected for the same position.

• Requirements on being successfully elected
The Association should define the requirements on being successfully elected for both election and re-election, such as the minimum percentage of vote in favour, etc.

• Casting deadline
The Association should specify the deadline for casting of ballots, after which no further ballots can be cast.

• Vote counting
The Association should implement a transparent procedure for counting of votes, i.e., to count the ballots immediately after the casting deadline and in case this is not practicable, seal all ballots to prevent tampering, to ensure the votes be counted, tabulated and consolidated in an open manner, such as in the presence of representative of election observers and nominees, or have the whole process being videotaped.

• Scrutineer
To ensure the election is fair and legitimate, an independent observer should be deployed to monitor the election process.

• Ballot safeguarding
The Association should put in place measures to guard against unauthorized tampering with the ballots cast (e.g. use of double-locked ballot boxes with keys separately kept).

• Ballot record
The votes and ballot record should be properly maintained.