School Board Appointment Commission of Anne Arundel County

Voting procedures for candidate selection (enacted August 2017)

Voting will begin with each Commissioner writing the names of three candidates on a ballot, and signing that ballot.

There will be no specific order to the named candidates and no weight assigned to them in terms of points. Ballots will be collected and read aloud by staff, and each named candidate will be recorded with a single tally. Commissioners will be asked to confirm their ballots.

The three candidates (plus any ties) who receive the most tallies will advance to the next round. All others will be eliminated from consideration.

No candidate can be appointed in the first round. That round is intended solely to narrow the field to a group of finalists.

Commission staff members will confer to double-check the vote totals after the first round. The three candidates receiving the most tallies (again, plus any ties) will advance.

Once the field of candidates has been narrowed, voting in a round-by-round format will commence. Each Commissioner will cast a written ballot naming a single candidate of that Commissioner’s preference. Ballots will be collected and read aloud by staff. Votes will be recorded. If a candidate receives the legally required eight (or more) votes in any round, that candidate is appointed to the Board of Education.

It is mathematically impossible for two candidates to receive eight or more votes.

If no candidate receives eight votes in a given round, any candidate not receiving a vote will be eliminated from consideration. If all candidates receive at least one vote, the field remains the same. A subsequent round of voting will then be conducted with the remaining candidates eligible to receive votes. This process will continue until a candidate receives at least the necessary eight votes.