Fiscal Constraints
Mean Changes in
Trustee Election
Last year, we introduced online voting in the annual Indiana University Trustee Election as a measure of fiscal prudence and environmental responsibility. This year, it has become a financial necessity, and next year, it will bring about changes in the election.
This year, voters may still choose paper or online ballots, but thereafter we can no longer automatically send a paper ballot to every eligible voter when barely 8 percent actually vote.
In 2010, you will be sent a postcard, which you must return in order to receive a paper ballot. If you do not return the postcard, we will assume you are voting online. We will not automatically send you a paper ballot.
In 2008, the bill for printing ballots and mailing them came to $150,000. Printing costs have continued to go up since then, and in early February, the U.S. Postal Service announced that the price of a first-class stamp would climb to 44 cents this spring. We mail roughly 500,000 ballots each election season. Although we use bulk mail rates, the costs are now prohibitive.
When we launched online voting, we envisioned a transition phase of several years, during which we would provide voters with the option of paper or electronic balloting. But given the downturn in the economy and the rise in prices, we cannot afford a lengthy transition.
Last year, 32,500 people cast ballots, about half of them electronic, which meant we did not have to send them paper ballots and they did not have to return them. If the 250,000 graduates who have provided the IU Alumni Association with their e-mail addresses were to vote online, it would cut election costs in half.
Thus, we urge all IU alumni to vote online. You can sign up at www.TrusteeElection.iu.edu. It’s safe, free, and extremely easy.
This year, voters may still choose paper or online ballots, but thereafter we can no longer automatically send a paper ballot to every eligible voter when barely 8 percent actually vote.
IU’s alumni are its best friends, its strongest supporters, its family. We look to you to assume a leadership role in this critical time.
