Suddenly we've gone voting mad!

It seems votes, like buses, come along in groups.  In the 11 months since I became S-G, we've only had any voting by the WCF Members at the July Council meeting.  We've done a number of consultation exercises though, on issues such as the 10 Year Schedule of events, our new decision-making process, and so on.

By chance, a number of things have now all coincided to mean we have 3 votes all running through November, on different topics:

> our Presidential election is underway, with votes from all WCF Full Members due by 24th November.
> we also have been polling our Full Members about the draft 11th Edition Statutes, which incorporate the new decision-making process.  That vote runs until 11th December.
> and we are about to poll about half our Full Members about a seat on the WCF GC Rules Committee.

You might wonder why the last one is "about half".  It's because Australia, Egypt, England, NZ and USA all get to appoint a rep directly on the GC Rules Committee - while the other 6 Full Members (South Africa, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Scotland) are asked to elect the 6th member of the committee.

By chance, all these have come at once.  If the new Statutes are approved, then in future at least some of these would be simpler, quicker email ballots.

We avoided a fourth vote: luckily, we had exactly 4 nominations for the 4 vacancies on the Management Commitee, so all candidates are appointed without an election.  Keith Aiton and Gordon Smith retired by rotation (MC members have a 4 year term) but were prepared to stand again.  We are joined on the MC by Mike Orgill from USA and by Chris Wakeham from South Africa - welcome to Mike and Chris.

Our two Presidential hopefuls are Amir Ramsis and Stephen Mulliner - both well-known figures in the croquet world and also both current members of the MC.

The President and MC roles all commence from 1st January - so we'll have a new-look MC for the New Year.  We've started including Mike and Chris in our email debates so that, by January, they have some idea how we operate and what the current topics are - should make it less of a shock in January!