Election Process

Yes. The majority of board members are directly elected by the membership. The value of appointing members to the board is that particular skills and attributes that the board needs can be recruited – and remember, the majority of the board members making the appointments are always going to be elected. 

The six regions into which the League membership was divided for board elections were arbitrary and unwieldy; board members struggled to truly “represent” their regions. Under the new system, both elected and board-appointed members are responsible for considering the needs of all League members, and indeed all cyclists. Our appointed board members have always had strong ties to the bicycling community and impressive bicycling credentials. At the same time as we made this board change, we also reinvigorated the State Ambassador program to better connect the League to state and local activities, clubs and advocacy groups.

In March the League announced the opportunity to apply for open board positions via the League's website, E-news and social media.

Once applications were submitted by May 1, the nominating committee evaluated each candidate based on seven specific qualifications and their capacity to provide high-quality, national board service. Committee members take this responsibility extremely seriously, to ensure that all the candidates have the basic qualifications necessary to serve the League well, regardless of their specific platform or views.

Each member of the governance committee makes an independent recommendation that are tallied and sent to the board as a recommended list of candidates. They approve the nominations for the upcoming election. Those not selected are thanked and invited to continue to play an active role in the League.

There is no single or right way to govern a national membership group; the hybrid approach of having some appointed and some elected board members is common and the use of a board nominating or governance committee to manage the election process is standard. In our own small world of bicycling, IMBA, Adventure Cycling and People for Bikes all have different board selection approaches — none as transparent as the League.

The League moved to a preferential voting system for the 2011 board election. We tested our system by conducting a survey for our members on our website. We asked you to rank a list of 10 cyclists from 1 to 10, and then used the principles of instant runoff voting (IRV) to determine the all-time best cyclist, and the four runners up, in a trial run of how we’ll elect our five board members. Here’s how the vote was calculated.

We thank the experts over at Fair Vote for their technical assistance in this test vote.

In the first ballot, Eddie Merckx had a simple majority of the first place votes, with 68 votes of 133 cast. He’s our best cyclist of all time, and was elected to the five member “best cyclist” board.

First ballot, number of first-place votes:
Eddie Merckx 68

Fausto Coppi 1
Gino Bartali 1

Jacques Anquetil 2

Jeannie Longo 16

Lance Armstrong 18

Marshall “Major” Taylor 26

None of the Above 1

Bernard Hinault, Francesco Moser, and Graeme Obree received no first-place votes.

With Merckx already elected to the board, we turned our attention to the second slot. Merckx’s name was removed from all the ballots, redistributing those 68 first place votes to the second name on each of those ballots. While Lance Armstrong had fewer votes than Major Taylor before Merckx’s votes were redistributed, he had the lead when the second ballot began, and he would never look back. Here’s how the vote looked at the beginning of the second round.

First place votes at the beginning of the polling for the second slot
:
Fausto Coppi 13

Jacques Anquetil 4
Jeannie Longo 30
Lance Armstrong 38
Marshall “Major” Taylor 35
Gino Bartali 5
Bernard Hinault 7

There was no candidate with a majority, so we began removing the cyclists with the fewest first-place votes from the ballots, and redistributing their first place votes to the next cyclists on those ballots. First Obree and Moser, who got no first place votes, were removed, then Anquetil, Bartali and Hinault. Armstrong, Taylor, Longo, and Coppi all gained votes as the runoffs were calculated, but their relative order never changed. Coppi was eliminated in the fifth runoff, leaving three candidates:

First place votes for the second slot, after the elimination of Fausto Coppi

Jeannie Longo 36
Lance Armstrong 50
Marshall “Major” Taylor 46

There were more than enough votes in play when Jeannie Longo was eliminated to put Major Taylor over the top, but her ballots were split equally between Armstrong and Taylor, and Armstrong won the second slot by 4 votes over Major Taylor, almost exactly the difference between the two men at the beginning of the ballot.

Armstrong was then eliminated from all of the ballots to conduct the runoffs for the third slot.

The third election was very similar to the second — cyclists were eliminated in the same order, and Major Taylor led from the first ballot to the last.
The instant runoff system played a more interesting role in the election of the fourth candidate to our “board,” following the election of Merckx, Armstrong, and Taylor (and their elimination from the ballots for the remaining two slots.

Vote distribution at the beginning of the fourth runoff election:

Bernard Hinault 22

Fausto Coppi 32

Gino Bartali 6

Graeme Obree 6

Jacques Anquetil 18

Jeannie Longo 46

Bartali and Obree were eliminated first, with the order of elimination being unimportant, since six additional votes would not have saved either man from being the next to be eliminated.

Fourth “board” slot election after the elimination of Bartali and Obree

Bernard Hinault 25

Fausto Coppi 35
Jacques Anquetil 20
Jeannie Longo 50

Jacques Anquetil gained only two votes in the redistribution process, and was the next to be eliminated. Jeannie Longo’s commanding lead suddenly evaporated, as 17 of the redistributed votes went to Fausto Coppi, with only 1 to Longo, and 2 to Hinault. (You’ll note at this point in the process that the total number of votes is shrinking a little, as some ballots are “exhausted” as a result voters who did not rank any of the remaining cyclists.)

Fourth “board” slot election after the elimination of Bartali, Obree, and Anquetil

Bernard Hinault 27

Fausto Coppi 52
Jeannie Longo 51

Hinault’s 27 votes could have cast the result in either direction, but at this point you had to suspect where things were headed: a voting block of fans of European men’s road racing was now setting the pace. And indeed, Coppi received 2/3rds of the reallocated ballots, to win the fourth slot by a 10 vote margin.

Vote counts at the beginning of the runoff for the fifth slot

Bernard Hinault 31

Francesco Moser 1
Gino Bartali 11

Graeme Obree 8

Jacques Anquetil 28
Jeannie Longo 50

Jeannie Longo began the balloting for the fifth board slot with a commanding lead. As her competition were dropped, one by one, she slowly added to her vote total, but Hinault was gaining ground, buoyed by the same voting block that had pushed Coppi into the fourth slot. She did attain the required majority in the final ballot, winning 67 votes to 62 after the elimination of Jacques Anquetil.

Top five cyclists of all time, as voted by League of American Bicyclists members:
    1.    Eddie Merckx
    2.    Lance Armstrong
    3.    Marshall”Major” Taylor
    4.    Fausto Coppi
    5.    Jeannie Longo