Elder Cynthia Bolbach was elected moderator of the 219th General Assembly on the fourth ballot at 10:40 p.m. Saturday night. The election process was riddled with technical difficulties, as it became apparent that the wireless voting system was not functioning as promised, and as many as 140 votes were not tallied in early votes. “I hope my new middle name doesn’t become ‘Florida’,” Bolbach quipped with a dry wit that characterized her responses. Earlier, after candidate James Belle responded to a question with a rambling response, she noted, “Ministers going off on tangents. Who knew?”
Bolbach’s election was perhaps more a result of the weariness of the voters in the face of candidates who did not distinguish themselves in the question and answer period. Nevertheless, it is a victory for progressives, as she has aligned herself with that wing of the church. More significantly, perhaps, it is a victory for the proposed new Form of Government, as she has served as vice-moderator of the nFoG Task Force since 2006.
The wireless electronic voting devices were a major problem in assuring an accurate vote count. In the first ballot for moderator, a total of 496 votes were tallied, of which Bolbach garnered 149, or 30%. By the fourth and final ballot, the technicians had managed to tweak the system to record 635 votes, of which Bolbach received 325, or 51%. It was estimated that the total number of voting commissioners was about 640, so the final tally was more or less accurate.
[I had a wonderful, insightful, complete analysis that was unfortunately lost due to a complete system failure on my laptop -- fortunately this much was saved and I can access it on my wife's computer. If I can restore my hard drive, we'll see if I can retrieve the column. In the meantime, I am in panic mode as all my ACC materials are on the other computer!]
No comments:
Post a Comment