Election Supervisor's Report to IBT Members
Candidates Nominated for International Office at the 27th IBT International Convention -- 1,799 delegates, including delegates elected from BLET General Committees, attended the 27th International Convention of the IBT in Las Vegas, Nevada from June 26 through June 30, 2006. At the convention, delegates nominated candidates for IBT International offices. There are contested elections for the offices of General President, General Secretary-Treasurer, Vice-President At-Large, and Vice-President for the Central, Eastern and Southern regions. The candidates nominated for the ballot are listed below, by office sought and in the order in which they appeared on the nomination ballots. Each candidate received at least five percent of the delegate votes cast in their nomination contest.
No slate affiliation or groupings are shown or implied by this listing (the deadline for filing slate declarations is August 31, 2006).
Officers Duly Elected at the 27th International Convention The number of candidates nominated at the Convention for regional vice-presidents for the Western Region and for Teamsters Canada did not exceed the number of positions available. Accordingly, on the last day of the convention the Election Supervisor certified that these International officers were duly elected:
These duly elected officers will not start their term until the final certification of the results of the rank-and-file election for the contested International offices.
General Election Dates Every IBT member, including newly merged BLET members, will have an opportunity to campaign, support and vote for any candidate or group of candidates in the International officer election. Candidates may publish campaign literature in upcoming issues of the Teamster and Teamster Canada. The Office of the Election Supervisor will conduct the mail ballot election for the contested offices. We expect that ballots will be mailed to the entire IBT membership on October 10, 2006, and that the ballot count will start on November 13, 2006 continuing each day to completion. Details of the balloting and count will be published in coming issues of this magazine, and on www.ibtvote.org.
Election Protests Members should know that the Election Supervisor sanctioned IBT members in recent protest rulings. Two cases involved members who collected ballots from others. In re: Pope, 2006 ESD 316 (June 30, 2006); In re: Berg, 2006 ESD 278 (May 30, 2006). In the third case the Election Supervisor found that a Convention delegate assaulted an IBT member and nominated candidate for International office. In re: Berg, 2006 ESD 315 (June 29, 2006). Sanctions issued in these cases included disqualification of delegate candidates for misconduct, revocation of convention credentials, refunding of per diems payments, fines, and referral to the IRB. You can read these decisions at www.ibtvote.org, and print out copies from the website. We will sanction members for misconduct that interferes with the election process, or that denies to other members the right to exercise their free choice to vote in the election.
Candidate Forum Candidates for the office of General President (or, if they choose, the General Secretary Treasurer running on their slate) must participate in a candidate forum where they will have an opportunity to address issues affecting the IBT and its members. The forum will be recorded or broadcast and the broadcast will be accessible to members. Under the Rules, the debate is scheduled to occur in August 2006. Check www.ibtvote.org for details on the date, time and location of the candidate forum.
© 2006 Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen