Handicapping the CIRA Election: Part II, the results

Last week, I laid out my bets for the CIRA Board of Directors election. To recap, I predicted that the following candidates would be elected;

• Kerry Brown
• Eric Boehm
• Bill St. Arnaud
• Kevin McArthur

So how did I do? Well, the results are in and my predictions were half right. Kerry and Bill were both elected, but Eric and Kevin lost to Susan Mehinagic and Andrew Escobar.

Susan’s win was a surprise to me – not because she isn’t a worthy director, but because she came out of nowhere. This happens fairly regularly with the Nominating Committee candidates because of their recruiting and selection practices. All in, I’m pretty happy that I managed to pick two of the three successful candidates.

Not so on the members side. It was a really tough pick this year. I really thought that Frank Michlick and Kevin McArthur would do a lot better as a result of the support of their respective constituencies. I really thought the battle would go either way and that Rob Villeneuve or Marita Moll might come up the middle. I was right about Rob given his strong showing but I underestimated the degree to which Marita and Kevin would split the progressive vote while at the same time slightly over-estimating how many ballots Kevin would gain from the support he had from OpenMedia, etc. I also completely blew it when it came to Andrew Escobar, forgetting the fact that he only lost the 2010 election for the member seat by 4 ballots. Not sure if I would have called the results differently, but I would have at least mentioned him in my first post.

In any event, I think all the candidates did a great job, and I really appreciate everyone investing so strongly in this important process. And of course, my best wishes to all of the successful candidates.

The results broke down like this;

Nomination Committee Slate

• Brown, Kerry 433 Elected *
• St.Arnaud, Bill 352 Elected *
• Mehinagic, Susan 312 Elected *
• Gibson, Bill 294
• Boehm, Eric 254
• Evans, Gary 228
• Vidal, François 210

Members’ Slate

• Escobar, Andrew 215 Elected *
• McArthur, Kevin 154
• Villeneuve, Rob 112
• Moll, Marita 111
• Walton, Catherine 97
• Williams, Tom 95
• Michlick, Frank 62
• Makuch, Greg 51
• Aguiar, Reinaldo 43