I always suspected there is a fair amount of apathy among ACRL members when it comes to annual elections. People don’t know who is running (or may not care), they may find the ALA voting system annoying, or they may be too busy to take a few minutes to log on and submit a ballot. At a minimum it’s not all that difficult to vote for a few officers of one’s section.
ACRL recently issued its 2007 voting results. Perhaps the apathy isn’t quite as bad as I thought. Voting participation is up across every section. Overall, all sections combined, there was a 9% increase in ballots cast and a 4% overall increase for the participation rate.
Good news indeed, but compared to voter participation in some significant national elections, ACRL still needs to work hard to get the vote out. And let’s not forget that our vice-president/president-elect election was a tie. How remotely impossible does that sound? What if your vote had been the deciding one? But you had to vote to make a difference. I’ll be looking forward to these numbers next year, and I hope to see them go way up.