The biennial elections process for the WINS Board of Directors will be initiated in early October, 2009. Announcements to begin the process will be posted on the email lists. The current Board Officers were elected in December, 2007 and took office in January, 2008. The positions are effective for a period of two years. The Officers elected in 2009 will hold office for calendar years 2010 and 2011. Please take a few minutes to review what the election process entails. The WINS Bylaws present the basic parameters for our elections. Beyond the absolutes in the Bylaws, I'll note some additional logistical and administrative instructions. Please read the Bylaws as a refresher on the elections procedures and the duties of the elected Officers.

The WINS Board of Directors is composed of individual, adult members, eighteen years of age or older, who are elected to the offices of President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Operations Administrator, Newsletter Editor and Librarian. New officers are elected, or incumbent Officers are retained (there are no term limits), by a simple majority vote of the active membership as defined in the Bylaws. Board Officers must be active members in good standing. The election process will consist of several phases during the last quarter of this year to include nominations, campaigns, voting, tallying and winners announcements.

Nominations
Please consider either running for office or nominating another active member for a Board position. If you're an active member and you desire to run for office, please announce your intent. If you'd like to nominate another active member for office, the process requires three steps. The first step is to contact that member to ascertain whether s/he will accept your nomination. The second step is to announce your formal nomination of that candidate. And the third step is for the candidate who has been nominated by another active member to formally accept nomination.

In order for active members to officially run for office, their nominations require a 'second' from another active member. So, if you've thrown your own hat into the ring, another active member must second your self-nomination. If you've been nominated by someone else, your nomination must be 'seconded' by a third-party active-member to be valid. Once you've received a 'second' on your nomination, you'll be on the official ballot.

A new thread will be started on the WINS CoinTalk Forum for nominations. That's the only official location for nominations. Please utilize said Nominations Thread to nominate yourself; nominate another member; accept your nomination which was made by another member; or second another member's nomination. Please do not accomplish any portion of the nominations process on the WINS Talk or WINS Trade lists. Instructions to join the Coin Talk Forum are noted below.

Campaigns
Every candidate who has received a second for their nomination is eligible to campaign, if they care to do so. As with the nominations, campaigning must take place on the WINS CoinTalk Forum. In the spirit of the WINS club, campaigning must be positive, cordial, family-oriented, and free of flaming or controversial subject matter. Campaigning should consist of rendering a self-biography and/or relating what you believe you can offer to WINS as a member of the Board of Directors. A new thread will be started on the WINS CoinTalk Forum for autobiographies and campaign platforms. That's the only official location for campaigning and autobiographies. Please do not accomplish any portion of the campaigning process on the WINS Talk or WINS Trade lists. Instructions to join the Coin Talk Forum are noted below.

Voting
Once the campaigning portion of the election process is completed, an official vote will take place. Voting is limited to one vote per candidate from each active member. Offices are won by simple majority of the vote. The mechanism that we'll utilize for voting is currently being researched. If need be, the voting will be conducted by simple email ballot. The voting and tallying will ultimately be set up by our IT Professional, Operations Administrator JD White. When it comes time to vote, he'll advise everyone of the process he'll utilize.

Coin Talk Forum
To participate in the WINS-elections process, you must be a member of the CoinTalk Forum. That forum is hosted by WINS member Peter Davis. Within that forum, Peter maintains a separate, private section for WINS members only. Except for the actual voting, this special WINS section of CoinTalk is where our elections process will take place.

If you're not already a member of CoinTalk, membership is easy. Please visit CoinTalk and click on the "register" link on the right, near the top of the page.

Once registration is complete, please send an email to or to . The email should advise that you're a WINS member, that you've registered on CoinTalk, and that you're requesting to be activated in the WINS section of Coin Talk.

Once Peter or Doug notify you of activation, you should log onto the CoinTalk site and, if need be, complete the "jump" link (on the right side at the bottom of the page) to World Internet Numismatic Society. There you'll find all of our elections threads.

In addition to the Nominations thread and the Campaign thread, one additional thread will be started on the WINS CoinTalk Forum. The thread will be titled WINS Elections Discussions. This thread is reserved for anything that's pertinent to the elections process aside from the Nominations and Campaigns. Please utilize this thread for any other elections-related matters/issues or discussions. Please remember there are no elections-related discussions permitted on the WINS Talk or WINS Trade lists.

In summary

• Nominations for WINS elections begin in early October, 2009 when announced on the email lists.
• Campaigning may begin as soon as a candidate is nominated, seconded and accepts the nomination.
• Nominations and campaigning will close in early December, 2009.
• Voting for candidates, as announced on the email lists, will last two weeks.
• Tallying of the votes and the announcement of the winners will take place roughly the last two weeks of December, 2009.
• Newly elected Officers will assume office at 12:01 AM MST, January 1, 2010.