To All Members of the MSFA,

As you know by now, the 2020 convention will be different than any other convention we have ever held. There will be a lot of information coming out over the next few weeks but we need to address one of the more important issues of the convention now is the election of our new 2020-2021 officers and bylaw amendments. The election subcommittee of the convention met with the executive committee on Saturday, May 2 to go over their proposal on how this year’s election will be conducted and this was approved unanimously.

Please see the information below for the election process including important dates.

Nominations:

• Anyone wishing to run for office must submit a letter via email of their intent to the Secretary by midnight May 15, 2020. His email is doyle.cox2010@gmail.com.
• Official nominations will be made during a special election meeting at a date and time to be announced. Details of this meeting will be forthcoming but it is our intent that people can logon to view the nominations. Please note that the candidate will still choose the person making the nomination as well as the person making the second and reading the names of those that also second their nomination just like we do at the beach.
• Final List of Candidates will be posted on our convention website shortly after the live nominations.
• Anyone running unopposed will have a vote cast by the Secretary. If the Secretary is running unopposed a vote will be cast for them by the President. Their names will appear on the ballot for information purposes only. Election process- Voting will be conducted by electronic voting. We have made a paper ballot available but only if all possible attempts have been exhausted to vote electronically. To be completely honest, we do not feel a paper ballot is necessary, but if you require one please contact the Secretary.

Voting

• 5 individual links to the ballots will be sent via email to the lead delegate for each company. It is their responsibility to work with their delegates to ensure all 5 votes are cast for their company.
• 1 link to a ballot will be sent to each of the Past Presidents of the Association to allow them to cast their vote.
• Bylaw Amendments will also appear on the ballot with a brief description of each requested change. More information about each will be available on the convention website.

Election timeline

• Ballots emailed to Companies and Past Presidents on June 19th, 2020 for review
• Voting will open at midnight on June 21st, 2020
• Voting will close at midnight on June 26th, 2020
• Election Committee will compile and post results on June 27, 2020

I would like to thank the subcommittee for their work on this important task and the Executive Committee for their willingness to meet about this as quickly as they did.

As you can see, one of the most important things each company must do in order to participate in the election is to submit their convention credentials as soon as possible including email addresses and making sure your dues are paid. As of the writing of this letter there are still approximately 100 companies that need to submit their credentials and about 10 that need to pay their dues. Please take care of both of these as soon as possible. For those of you that have submitted your credentials but did NOT include an email address for at least your delegation leader, please contact the Secretary with that information as soon as possible.

Thank you and please know that there will be more information coming regarding our 2020 convention as it becomes available. We will do all we can to keep the lines of communication open but it is also up to all of us to do our part. We urge everyone to check our website convention.msfa.org or msfa.org for details regularly.

Thank you and please stay safe.

Respectfully submitted,

Michael R. Faust
President