Archive of Our Own ^beta

The election has opened!

Every OTW member who joined between July 1, 2018, and June 30, 2019, should have a ballot by now. If you didn't get one, please check your spam folder first, then contact us via our contact form.

The election will run through 23:59 UTC on August 12, 2019; check this time zone converter to find out what time that will be for you.

Once you've voted, you can head over to Twitter and use the hashtag #otw2019 to let us know!

If you used a Yahoo email address when you donated: On July 15, Yahoo purged accounts that had not been logged into within the past year. As a result, many ballots from the election that were sent to Yahoo emails bounced. If you signed up for membership with a Yahoo email address, please check that you can log into your Yahoo account and received a ballot. If you cannot log into your Yahoo account, go to the elections contact form and select "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?" in order to submit an alternate email request. In the request, include your original Yahoo email address and the new one where you would like your ballot sent.

At this time, all eligible OTW members should have received an email linking to the voting instructions for 2019. The subject line was "Voting Instructions for Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board Election". Please note that anyone who didn’t receive this email is not on the voter rolls this year and will not receive a ballot.

The voting instructions email contains a link to a test version of the ballot. Please follow that link to make sure that the page displays correctly and the candidates are visible. If not, please ensure you are not blocking JavaScript from ajax.googleapis.com, bootstrapcdn.com, and/or opavote.com.

If you are a member and didn’t receive this email, please do the following:

1. Check your spam folder.
   • If you use Gmail, check your Social tab.
   • If the email is marked as spam, unmark it. Otherwise, you will not receive your ballot, as it will end up in spam as well.
2. If no email is present, open your donation receipt and check the date.
   • To vote in this election, your receipt must be dated between July 1, 2018, and June 30, 2019, inclusive of both dates.
   • If you paid by check, your membership is measured by the arrival date of the check.
3. If your donation was made during the eligible time period, make sure you checked the box to become a member. Membership is voluntary for those who donate at least $10; only members can vote.
4. If you did become a member, make sure you neither marked any email from the OTW as spam nor opted out of OTW emails or last year’s ballot. If you did so and would like to vote this year, you’ll need to follow step 5 below.
5. If you donated at least $10 during the eligible period and you checked the box to become a member, please fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic “Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?” Make sure to include the email you used when donating.
   • Membership has no connection to being a user of AO3 or Fanlore. Please don’t give us your AO3 or Fanlore username – we have no way of knowing who that name belongs to, and we don’t want to know.

Most importantly, if the voting instructions email bounces, gets marked as spam, or you opt out, you will not receive a ballot for this year’s election, and you may not receive a ballot next year. Similarly, if any of those things happened to last year’s election emails, you will not receive a ballot this year. Therefore, if you previously opted out of OTW emails or marked them as spam and would like to vote, fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic “Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?”

The chat will be held in the Elections Discord server from 4pm-5:30pm UTC on Sunday, July 21. [What time is that for me?] Please note that though the link to the chat server is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chats begin.

Read on to learn more about using Discord.

• On the login page, you'll need to provide a screen name.
• Once you enter the server, you'll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose, among other options, whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance.
• There are three rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee staffers: general, candidate_chats, and open_chat.
• General is where you'll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms.
• Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate amongst themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room.
• Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate's name, and the question. Use o// if it's a follow-up question to the current discussion.

It's almost election time! Being a member of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) means being able to vote for its Board of Directors. This helps affect how projects such as the Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, and Transformative Works and Cultures are run now and going forward. This year, our election for the Board of Directors will be held from August 9 to August 12, 2019. (Access the full Elections Timeline for 2019).

In order to vote, you need to be a member of the OTW by midnight UTC on June 30, 2019 (What time is that for me?). That means that you have to have made a donation of US$10 or more between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019, AND have chosen the "membership" option. If you're unsure whether this applies to a donation you've made, please contact our Development & Membership team.

If you participate in this voter registration drive, you will receive a specially designed icon, only available during this drive. Thank you for your support of the OTW! Register to vote and donate today!

The OTW is pleased to announce the following candidates for the 2019 Election (in alphabetical order by given name):

• Astrid Olin*
• Kirsten Wright
• Morgan Schroeder
• Rebecca Sentance

*July 1: Per an announcement, Astrid Olin withdrew from the ballot.

Because we have 2 seats to be filled and 4 candidates, the 2019 election will be contested – that is, the members of the OTW will vote on which candidates fill the seats.

The Elections Committee is excited to introduce the candidates to all of the members of the OTW! Included in this post are links to short Bios and Platforms written by the candidates. This post also marks the beginning of our Q&A period, during which we invite the public to submit questions for the candidates. Additionally, we will be holding a series of live chats – dates and times for those are to be announced based on candidate availability. Information on the voting period and how to vote will also be posted shortly.

In the meantime, there is a timeline of Elections events available here for your reference. Read on to learn more about our candidates and how you can submit questions for them!

Platforms and Bios

We asked each candidate to provide us with a bio that sums up their professional and fannish experience, as well as to write a Platform about their goals for their term on the Board by answering the following questions:

• Why did you decide to run for election to the Board?
• What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board?
• Choose one or two goals for the OTW that are important to you and that you would be interested in working on during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?
• What is your experience with the OTW's projects and how would you collaborate with the relevant committees to support and strengthen them? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.
• How would you balance your Board work with other roles in the OTW, or how do you plan to hand over your current roles to focus on Board work?

You can read both the candidates' answers to these questions and their bios by following the link below.

• Astrid Olin
• Kirsten Wright
• Morgan Schroeder
• Rebecca Sentance

Question & Answer (Q&A)

Candidates will also answer questions from the public. Anyone may submit questions via the Elections form. Please submit all questions by 11:59pm UTC on June 24 (what time is that where I live?). All candidates will answer each question submitted, subject to the following restrictions:

• Questions can be a maximum of 50 words long.
• Questions must not be repeats of questions from the Platforms. This is to allow candidates to spend their time answering new questions.
• Similar questions will be grouped together so candidates don’t have to repeat themselves. Elections staff will decide which questions are similar enough to group.
• If you have a follow-up to a Platform question, please specifically mention that it is a follow-up so it isn’t treated as a repeat.

The posting date for answers will be chosen depending on the number of questions received. Posts will be spread out, arranged by topic, to make it easier for voters to read all the answers.

The OTW Elections committee is pleased to announce that the timeline for the 2019 election for new members of the Board of Directors has been posted!

This year's election will be held August 9-12. This means that the deadline for staff to declare their candidacy is June 14.

As usual, the election membership deadline is June 30. If you're interested in voting, please make sure your membership is active as of that date.

You can find out how to become a member on the Elections website, or if you're familiar with the process, you can donate here!

If you want to know more about the election process in general, you can check out the Elections Policies.

We're looking forward to an active election season with ample communication between candidates and voters, and we hope you'll be a part of it. Don't forget to follow the Elections committee on Twitter to keep up to date with the latest news!

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact Elections.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Clark Seanor, who volunteers as a staffer in our Elections Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

Being in the Elections team in general means that you're responsible for the OTW's Board elections running -- and running smoothly. Voting Process Architects, or VPAs, help with the technical side: we investigate (and solve!) issues and make sure that processes are documented.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

In a typical week, I'll set aside some time to work on the tasks my team have distributed amongst ourselves. We're always working toward a goal. Up til recently part of this would have been a weekly team-wide meeting, but we're testing out an asynchronous meeting style to deal with more disparate time zones. So, VPAs meet once a week to discuss what we've done, then we report to the rest of the team and check their reports.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I decided to volunteer because I appreciate the work the OTW does as a whole. Fandom needs its own, not-for-profit spaces to thrive, and AO3 is a big part of that. In truth, the work of other teams is what inspired me to join mine: Accessibility, Design, & Technology for making things work, Legal for advocating for fan issues, wranglers for making the AO3 tag system possible. There are a lot of teams and a lot of people behind the scenes who all form a small part of what we do, and I find that amazing.

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

The most fun thing about volunteering for me is talking to the people I've met through it. I know many people across many teams who I've learned a lot from and even made friends with. Though that isn't what I joined for, it's definitely been a factor in continuing to volunteer!

What fannish things do you like to do?

One of the big things I like to do is cosplay: my favourite ones I've done include Bucky Barnes and Tony Stark from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Bucky cosplay had a metallic-looking arm that was my first experience in foam armour, and the Tony cosplay had a 'working' arc reactor. I like the process of building cosplay: you learn something every time you build something new.

I've also built a few models of characters from books and graphic novels I've liked. The one I'm most proud of is still the first one I made -- a figure of the character Chris Shane from Lock In.

I also write a fair amount of fic. Most of it is gen, and most of it is Marvel, though I often write in smaller fandoms for fic exchanges. Fic is important to me because I get to write stories about the characters I love and imagine them in new scenarios. And sometimes other people like what I write too, which is always a good feeling.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Now that the 2018 election is over, we're happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!

For the 2018 Election, we had 5649 total eligible voters. Of those, 827 voters cast a ballot, which represents 14.6% of the potential voters. This is an increase from 12.7% of voters in 2017.

For those who might be interested in the number of votes each candidate received, please note that our election process is designed to elect an equal cohort of Board members in order to allow them to work well together, so we do not release that information. As a general rule, we also won’t disclose which of our unsuccessful candidates received the fewest votes, since we don’t want to discourage them from running again in the future when circumstances and member interest might be different.

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who participated at every stage of the election! We hope to see you at the virtual polls again next year.