Election Update

Hello all, brace yourselves! This is going to be lengthy:

As most of you are aware, elections are held every November. Yesterday, we held elections at our meeting for the Treasurer and President. After the meeting, it was brought to the Executive Committee's attention that Bylaws state that student members are not eligible to vote. We checked the Bylaws, which are also posted on CTNP.enpnetwork.com for your review, and confirmed that students are "Associate Members" and are not eligible to vote until they are licensed and then become "Active Members".

The Executive Committee then had a "quorum" today to discuss the most just way to resolve this issue. We considered many options. Of course, no voting system is perfect. Some active members were not able to attend the meeting, not all candidates were present to campaign for themselves, and ideally members would be able to familiarize themselves with all nominees through a campaign. Our group has more than doubled in size in the past year and processes are continuously evolving because of it. In the past, there was little competition for committee positions. Moving forward, we can all recognize that these are issues that need to be remedied prior to the November 2016 elections. An area of improvement would be increased attendance of the November meeting as we had fewer members present last night, compared to 18-20+ at previous meetings. Ultimately, the votes of (4) student members were removed from the calculations. In keeping with past elections, only the votes of present and active members were counted.

We would like to again congratulate Ms. Tracy Knopp Kramer, NP as our new President, with the overwhelming majority of the vote. The Treasurer vote remained "neck and neck" - before AND after - the revocation of student member votes. Each time, only 1 vote made the difference. We would like to again congratulate Ms. Leslie Cernosek, NP as our new Treasurer.
We would also like to thank all candidates for their ongoing service to Central Texas Nurse Practitioners, including their contributions of volunteerism, political outreach, advocacy for nurse practitioners, and community service. These do not go unnoticed!

Additionally, student members – your contributions to CTNP are also greatly appreciated! We hope to see you all on the ballots in the future!

Respectfully,
Shannon, CTNP Secretary