More transparency for gvea elections
Originally submitted to the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer as a Community Perspective, written by FCAC Energy Justice Organizer Eleanor Gagnon
On May 9 Golden Valley Electric Association will mail their ballots and open online voting. It is election time! In light of this, I would like to draw attention to a few issues and possible irregularities surrounding GVEA’s candidate selection.
Getting on the ballot requires most candidates to go through GVEA’s district nominating committees, which operate with minimal transparency and have a large amount of influence on who appears on the ballot. A recent change to GVEA’s bylaws may have inadvertently made them more powerful.
GVEA has a separate nomination committee for each of its seven districts. These consist of 3-7 members living in that district (members of GVEA’s Member Advisory Council are encouraged to serve). The committees exist to recruit candidates and vet applicants. Would-be candidates can also get on the ballot through a petition process. Until this year, nominating committees had to advance a minimum of two candidates–if they couldn’t find two candidates, then they couldn’t advance anyone, forcing candidates to use the petition process to get on the ballot. The bylaw change now makes it possible for nominating committees to advance a single candidate. This change was meant to save unopposed candidates from needing to use the petition process. But it also makes it possible for the nominating committee to ‘anoint’ a single candidate by rejecting any competitors. This is especially troubling because the nominating committees operate with minimal transparency.
This year, in both Districts 5 and 6 the nominating committees only advanced a single candidate. In the case of District 6 (the region around Delta Junction), we know that at least one seemingly-qualified candidate was rejected by the nominating committee. Because of how the committees operate, we don’t know why this candidate was rejected, or if there were additional applicants in either district. Rejected candidates still have the option of running via petition. But this year candidates only had seven days to gather the needed signatures after the nominating committee decisions were announced–this limited amount of time makes it particularly difficult for candidates in rural districts to change tack and gather the needed signatures, potentially preventing interested members from running if denied by a nominating committee.
GVEA has had difficulty finding board candidates in recent years–four out of seven races have been cancelled since 2023 due to a lack of candidates (including District 5 this year). This does not happen regularly at other Railbelt utilities. Luckily, in District 6, a different candidate entered the race via petition, ensuring that an election will be held. However, in North Pole, no election will be held.
GVEA needs to make its election process more transparent. Here it could follow the example of Chugach Electric Association, which recently faced its own scandals regarding its Nominating Committee’s rejection of seemingly-qualified candidates. Chugach now publishes the number of applicants, so members know how many are rejected. GVEA could do the same. They should also require that the nominating committees provide their reasoning for rejecting applicants. Otherwise our ability to ensure our board reflects our values lies in the hands of unelected and unaccountable members.
