By Greg Ellison

Upcoming election will be test of community interest

(July 23, 2020) After redesigning balloting systems to abandon the Scantron technology that had been used, the Ocean Pines Elections Committee will be watching this year’s board of directors’ race to gauge community interest in using electronic voting in the future.

“This year we’re going away from [Scantron],” said Elections Committee Chairman Steve Habeger. “It’s obsolete in many ways.”

Habeger said while creating a new election balloting system for 2020, committee members  weighed the potential to provide electronic voting as a non-paper option.

“Certainly electronic voting is an entity that’s used,” he said. “Every professional society that I belong to — we elect our officers by electronic ballot.”

Habeger, who lives in the Parke section of Ocean Pines, said similar methodology has already been adopted for comparable elections in his neighborhood.

“We’ve been using electronic voting for our board elections a few years now,” he said.

As part of researching voting systems earlier this year, committee members got pricing for electronic balloting from one of the many vendors providing such services.

“There’s a million of them out there if you do a search on electronic voting sources,” he said.

Recognizing the many options available, the committee opted to include a survey question on this year’s ballot to see how the community feels about it.

“Primarily, we’re not sure if the membership would be interested in doing something like that,” he said. “It’s more taking the temperature of the association members.”

Habeger said opinions vary widely on the topic.

“Some people tell us we’d get greater voter participation if we did that  [but] other people say the exact opposite,” he said.

Further muddying the waters are OPA bylaw requirements.

“The bylaws … talk about people getting ballots,” he said. “It might be difficult to do without changing the language.”

Habeger said careful attention should be paid to accommodate the older demographic in Ocean Pines if electronic voting were adopted for future elections.

“Not everybody has a computer, so it would require us to put up a kiosk somewhere like the community center clubhouse with a person there trained to help people log in,” he said. “That’s what we do in the Parke.”

The possibility of deploying a hybrid approach with both electronic voting and mail-in balloting also exists, Habeger said.

“People could vote using their smart phone, tablet or computer,” he said. “There’s so many possibilities out there it’s amazing.”

This summer’s OPA Board election pits incumbents Doug Parks and Dr. Colette Horn, and Stuart Lakernick in a three-way battle for a pair of open seats.

Ballots were mailed to more than 6,500 association members earlier this month and should be received by the OPA, not postmarked, by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 5.

Habeger said the  ballot survey question regarding electronic voting is an attempt to ascertain the ideal approach for Ocean Pines.

“We’re doing well with what we have [but] we’d like to get more participation,” he said. “We’d like to make it easier for people.”

OPA board election ballots can be returned by mail to the Berlin Post Office located at 20 Broad Street or dropped off in person in the ballot box inside the Ocean Pines Administration Building on 239 Ocean Parkway.

Returned ballots will be counted on Aug. 7 with results validated the following day at the OPA annual meeting.

The annual meeting takes place on Saturday, Aug. 8 at 9 a.m. at the Worcester County Veterans Memorial located by the South Gate Pond. Property owners are requested to bring identification for verification purposes, with a minimum quorum of 100 required to stage the meeting and validate vote totals.

Members with election questions can contact the Ocean Pines Elections hotline at 410-208-3989 or email elections@oceanpines.org.