my protest vote in the soa elections

Suppose you're a member of a group with a stated purpose. Maybe it's a group of people that share the same hobby, or a travel club. Something like that. But suppose the group's leadership is controlled by a small group of people who have interpreted the rules in such a way that they have full control of who can be elected. The leadership picks the candidates for office, and there's no mechanism for anyone not endorsed by the current leadership to get elected. You might not care, and continue your membership without making a fuss. But you might care a lot, concerned about leadership that is effectively unanswerable to the club's membership. In which case you may want to leave. Now, suppose this isn't simply some kind of club for hobbyists. Suppose it's a professional organization, and you need to maintain your membership for your job. That's the situation that the membership of the Society of Actuaries found itself in about five years ago.

Before I go on, I need to stress that the opinions in this post are my own. They are not necessarilly shared by anyone else. That is, of course, true of all my posts. But I need to stress it here.

I earned my Fellowship in the SoA, and the right to vote in its elections, in 1997. I don't remember whether I voted that year. For the first 15 years that I could vote I was pretty blase about it. I didn't have the time or inclination to bother researching the candidates and their positions. My thoughts on the elections could have been easily summed up in one word: "Whatever." I have no doubt that that was the feeling of the majority of the SoA membership -- and that it still is.

At the time, there was a two ballot process. I don't recall the exact process, but FSAs could nominate candidates to appear on the first ballot. The top vote-getters would appear on the second ballot. At some point around ten years ago the process was changed. There would be only one ballot, and the Nominating Committee would be responsible for picking the candidates.

I wasn't aware of there being any issue until Tom Bakos. Bakos, who had an extensive history of service to the profession wanted to run for President Elect*. I knew Tom, having served with him on the American Academy of Actuaries' Committee on Professional Responsibility. Bakos had put his name in, but the Nominating Committee wouldn't put him on the ballot.

But the SoA bylaws grant FSAs the right to nominate**, so Bakos reached out to various members, soliciting their nominations. In 2012 he was nominated for President Elect by over 100 FSAs. But when the election came around, we couldn't vote for him because he wasn't on the ballot. Predictably, many of us who had nominated him raised a hoo-hah. We were infuriated that our nominations hadn't been honored. I contacted SoA leadership. So did a lot of others, apparently. The SoA President sent an explanatory email to the membership. The key paragraph reads as follows:

The SOA has a well-considered and effective system for identifying and selecting future leaders. Since a bylaws amendment in 2006, our Nominating Committee has been charged with vetting and recommending a slate of candidates for the Board. The Nominating Committee carefully considers all nominations and interviews nominees to learn more about their strategic vision and assess their leadership qualities against the position descriptions for these roles. The Committee develops a recommended slate of candidates, which is then reviewed and approved by the Board of Directors. Nominees who are not selected as candidates are invited to receive confidential feedback from the Committee. Mr. Bakos has received that feedback.

Essentially, he was explaining that our nominations were honored; Mr. Bakos was a nominee, but it's up to the Nominating Committee to decide which nominees become candidates. I felt -- many of us felt -- that this was a semantic game which made our right to nominate meaningless. As President Smith explained it, our nomination was effectively a suggestion. But anyone can suggest a candidate. An ASA could. An actuarial student could. My dentist could.

This procedure was defended by SoA leadership as necessary. Most actuaries simply don't have the time or inclination to fully research the candidates, their visions, their character, how well they play with others. The Nominating Committee's role in deciding which nominees become candidates was necessary, they argued, to protect actuaries and the actuarial profession from electing a bad actor. I'll admit that there's something plausible about that argument. But if a small cabal has absolute control over the levers of power, they can easily set the entire agenda. They can maintain a leadership body with their particular vision and become unanswerable to the general membership. That's simply not healthy. If they want to replace the current exam-based system of credentialling with something focused on college courses, they can do it. If they want to create a casualty specialty and try to force the Casualty Actuarial Society out of business, they can do it. If they want to inject their own opinions into every political issue (whether related to the actuarial field or not), they can do it. And it doesn't matter if literally all of the rest of the membership doesn't approve of their course of action.

Following the ensuing debate, SoA leadership relented, and agreed to a new process. The Nominating Committee would come up with a slate of endorsed candidates. Anyone qualified who gets nominated by a sufficient number of FSAs will get on the ballot as a "by petition" candidate. "Enough" is defined as at least 10% of the number of people who voted in the prior year's election. So

Spoiler alert: Jim Glickman got enough nominations this year, and is the only petition candidate for President-Elect on the ballot. I'm voting for him.

I think this rule is an abomination. It still doesn't seem to me to be a reasonable interpretation that hundreds of nominations are required to get on a ballot. I could see saying you need two nominations. Or even three. I'm not sure I can determine where I think is the cutoff between reasonable and unreasonable. But the current rule is, I think, unreasonable. I suppose I can see an argument made that they can't allow anyone with one nomination to be on the ballot because then they'd run the risk of having too many candidates. But I simply don't see that happening. Under the current system we don't have an unwieldy number of people on the list of candidates for nomination.

At any rate, the irony is that, by making it so difficult to get a candidate on the ballot through the member-nomination process, the leadership actually made it more likely that such a candidate can win. If it were easy to get on the ballot, we would see more such candidates, and they would split the protest votes. With only one petition candidate on the ballot, it's more likely that he or she can win.

Honestly, I have had very limited interaction with Glickman. But several actuaries whose judgement I tend to trust are supporting him. And I am doing so -- as a protest if for nothing else. The status quo needs to be changed.

*One peculiarity of the SoA governing structure is that one is not elected President. One is elected President Elect, then serves as President Elect for a year under the President (who is the prior year's President Elect). After a year, the President Elect becomes President, and is replaced by a newly-elected President Elect.

**Article III, §1.b. says "Fellows...are entitled to vote, hold office, make nominations, and generally exercise the rights of full membership."