WEC Adds Digital Voting Before 2027 Annual Meeting

Ballots Will Arrive By Mail; Members Can Vote Digitally, By Mail, and In Person

For the first time in the Co-op’s nearly 86 years, WEC members will be able to vote digitally for Board of Directors candidates. Members will receive ballots in the mail from Survey and Ballot Systems, or SBS, the Minnesota-based firm providing voting services to the Co-op. These ballots will arrive separately from the Annual Meeting issue of Co-op Currents. Members will then have the option to vote digitally following a secure link, to return their ballots by mail, or to vote in person at Annual Meeting. “The Board and staff at Washington Electric feel like we should do whatever we can, at reasonable cost, to make sure all members have the opportunity to vote,” said General Manager Louis Porter.

Why Add Digital Voting

The goal is to make voting more accessible and secure, said Dawn Johnson, WEC’s Administrative Assistant and the manager of Annual Meeting logistics. “If you vote electronically, it saves time, and the ballot is sure to reach us,” she said. Ideally, a digital option will prompt more members to participate, broadening the pool of voters, and ensuring their votes count. SBS manages elections for cooperatives and other groups around the country, including hybrid elections, like WEC’s, that offer multiple ways to cast a vote. WEC’s priority is security, Johnson said, so it was important to select a vendor that guarantees election integrity.

“If you vote electronically, it saves time, and the ballot is sure to reach us.”

– Dawn Johnson

WEC’s Ballot Committee is an independent member committee that does not include elected directors or candidates, co-chaired by Nancy Fuller of Bradford and Cort Richardson of East Montpelier. Slower postal service in recent years is a factor, Fuller confirmed. “Voting by mail when the mail service is poor equals lost votes, especially for those voting close to the Annual Meeting,” she said. When elections are decided by only a few votes, delays in the mail can change the outcome.

In addition to speed, precision matters. Occasionally, paper ballots are filled out incorrectly: this is called a spoiled ballot and can’t be counted. The Ballot Committee has always counted ballots by hand, and the team has an impeccable record: in the past five years, two elections were close enough to require a recount according to the Co-op’s bylaws. Neither recount changed the outcome of the election. However, an attraction of digital voting is that it is designed to support accuracy in recording voter intent and in tabulation.

What to Look For

In the past, the Annual Meeting issue of Co-op Currents was packaged with a ballot and return envelope and mailed to each member household. The newsletter and the ballot will now arrive separately. Ballots will be sent directly from SBS during the first week of April. “SBS does all the printing, all the mailing, and all the tallying of ballot packet material,” said Johnson. 

WEC members who prefer to vote by mail will have to return their ballots quickly. That’s because mail-in ballots must travel back to the Minnesota offices of SBS in time to be counted. Johnson and Fuller both remarked that it’s important to keep a mail option available — but that they hope most members will respond to the speed and security of digital voting.

The mailed ballots will have instructions for how to vote virtually, including a QR code members can scan immediately. “I’m hoping most members will open the ballot in the mail, scan it, vote, and be done,” Johnson said.

Managing Change

Fuller has supported WEC’s elections for 30 years, since she was a “homeschooling, single mom of four, and it was a great little gig to add to a busy schedule without a steady commitment,” she remembered. Over the years, she said, WEC elections have come to signal the start of her summer. The role of the co-chairs has been to collect and transport securely stored mailed ballots, set up the counting space, and manage in-person voting at Annual Meeting. They’re joined by Ballot Committee volunteers to count ballots for several hours on the day of Annual Meeting and the day prior, fueled by lunch and snacks provided by the Co-op.

Going forward, the Ballot Committee will disband, Fuller confirmed, as SBS will tabulate all digital and mailed ballots. However, per the Board of Directors’ decision, she and Richardson will stay on to manage in-person voting at Annual Meeting. The ballot box will remain, and they will add in-person votes to the count provided by SBS. Election results will be announced at Annual Meeting.

Fuller predicted that the small number of members who vote in-person will remain the same for a while. She’s hopeful that members who are used to mailing in their ballots will continue to participate, and that many of them will switch to digital. “I’m sure there will be more new voters” who are prompted to start voting in WEC elections, she said, because of the speed, familiarity, and practicality of the online platform.

Co-op Currents will continue to provide voting information to members as the new hybrid voting system rolls out in spring of 2027.