PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Tuan-hua David Ho

Voting Is Important, and It Is Easy and Simple

ASPB presidents have, at this time of year, routinely written to members urging them to vote. When I was getting ready to draft this letter for the same purpose, the ASPB staff was kind enough to share with me samples of past letters. They were all well written, and the message was loud and clear. There is nothing I can write that would improve on the literary merit or clarity of those letters. So instead, I want to make this letter something of a pep talk encouraging all ASPB members to do the easy, simple, and obvious thing: VOTE!

ASPB was formed in 1924 as an offshoot of the Botanical Society of America. It was a grass roots effort by a few dozen scientists who were actively involved in some aspect of plant physiology. Almost a century later, ASPB has become a much larger, more diverse, and highly active society with almost 5,000 members from every corner of the world. Yet the original principles of self-governance are still pretty much intact. To ensure that ASPB remains an organization ably serving its membership and actively promoting plant science, participation of our members in nominating and electing our leadership team is absolutely crucial. Not only has the Society tried to raise awareness of the importance of this democratic process, we have also devoted significant effort to make participation in this process easy and simple.

The one–two punch of this process is nomination and voting. The topic of my January/February President’s Letter was “Broadening and Enhancing Participation in the Nominating Process”; I strongly encouraged members to nominate candidates for president-elect, Executive Committee members, and various awards. At the same time, chairs of award committees have worked extra hard to actively solicit nominations from members, and the Society has also streamlined the nomination process, making it much easier for members to nominate. Consequently, I am delighted to report that we have received more than twice the number of nominations than in past years. With the increased participation, the award committees have a larger nomination pool to identify a diverse group of winners who would likely better represent the excellence in our membership.

Besides these awards, the leadership team of ASPB needs to be elected by members via voting. Two candidates each for president-elect and one position on the Executive Committee will be on the ballot this year. One of these two candidates for president received the most nominations from ASPB members at large, and the other was chosen by the Nominating Committee, consisting of the immediate past president, president, and president-elect, usually from the list of other nominees.

The ASPB office has prepared a brochure summarizing academic and service accomplishments for each of these candidates. It is available online at the Society website and is mailed to any member requesting a paper ballot. In addition, candidates for the Corresponding Membership award will be on the ballot. This honor, initially given in 1932, provides life membership and Society publications to distinguished plant biologists from outside the United States. This is an important outreach effort of our Society to network with plant scientists in other regions of the world. Endorsement of these awards by ASPB membership welcomes these distinguished scientists to be a part of our community.

Now is the time for the second act of this one–two punch democratic process, that is, the actual voting. How has our voting record been in the past? Frankly, it does not look very good. According to the record kept in the ASPB office, in the past decade and a half (since 1996), less than half of our members participated in voting, with the voter turnout ranging from 13% to 45%. These numbers did not compare well even with the U.S. major federal elections held in the same period, which ranged from 36% to 57%. In the United States, a common observation has been that as a result of low voter turnout, the president is almost always elected by less than half of the citizens. However, the ASPB record has been even worse because our presidents have always been elected by less than half, and often less than one-third, of our members eligible for voting.

Another revealing observation is that the winning margin of the ASPB president-elect in the past five years ranged from 2% to 42%, which means that fewer than 100 ballots could be the difference separating the two candidates. This is indeed a type of election where we could easily say “Every vote counts” and “Your vote can make a difference.” Suffice it to say, we do need to have a much higher level of participation from our membership in the voting process in order to make it more meaningful. Although the voter turnout has not been satisfactory, we have begun to see a potential upward trend in the past three or four years. This is most likely due to the increasing use of electronic voting at the ASPB website, which is simple and fast, taking no more than a few minutes to accomplish.

People join ASPB for various reasons. I understand that there are a good number of people who sign up with ASPB to enjoy a substantial discount for attending the annual meeting and/or for publishing papers in our two journals, Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell. While there is no doubt that these discounts are important membership benefits, the Society has much more to offer. The mission of ASPB is to promote the growth and development of plant biology and plant scientists in general. Besides organizing annual meetings and publishing journals, the Society is actively involved in education, public affairs, and diversity issues. Our voice is being heard in many places by many people, including schools, research institutions, government agencies, legislative bodies, and industries. Why not be a part of these efforts as well? How do you get involved? The first thing is to participate in choosing the leaders who are expected to carry out these missions on your behalf.

Many ASPB members, including myself, used to have the wrong impression that it would take a lot of time to cast a ballot by snail mail. However, the situation is much improved now. With the electronic voting website set up, it is really a cinch to vote. If you have managed to read this letter until this point, please don’t go back to what you were doing just a few minutes ago. Instead, spend the next few minutes going to the ASPB website to vote by simply clicking on this web connection and proceed.

As I have promised, it is going to be easy and simple. And your participation will have made you a full-fledged member of ASPB.

Tuan-hua David Ho