The results of the ballot on the Resolution, tabled at the Foxes Trust AGM, regarding a Rule change allowing Members to remove Society Board Members are as follows:
FOR: 136 (59%)
AGAINST: 94 (40%)
ABSTAIN: 3 (1%)
Under the Society Rules, a Resolution to amend the rules requires a 75% majority of those Members voting on a poll. As that percentage was not achieved the Resolution has failed to be passed.
The Board thanks all members who took the time an opportunity to vote in the ballot.
Details of how the ballot was organised and audited are below.
Governance Review
Given the number of members that voted in favour of the Resolution, the Board has decided to take action to amend the Society Policies to enable Members to hold those elected to the Board to be more accountable in between the three-year periods of office. This possible course of action was discussed at the AGM.
The Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) has been engaged to undertake a governance review of all of the Trusts Policies and procedures. At present, a Board Member can only be removed by a majority vote of the Board. The Board will draft and seek FSA approval for policy amendments that will provide Members with protocols and processes for holding Board Members to account, with the possibility of removal.
Whilst the Board realises the result will be a disappointment to some Members, we hope the action we are taking illustrates a willingness to change and improve our governance procedures.
Ballot information
There was some online chatroom criticism of the balloting method we had chosen, with comments that it was flawed. We did approach some specialist polling companies, such as Civitas, and ruled these out on various grounds mainly cost, time and data security. We therefore adopted a procedure advised by the FSA, and chose to use SurveyMonkey. No voting system is completely flawless, but we considered that the measures we had put in place, the likely numbers voting and the auditing process that would be undertaken, should provide a reliable and fair result for a membership of 591 eligible to vote.
The statistics: 554 members were individually emailed via the CRM a link to the ballot. 37 ballot forms were issued by post. 230 online votes were received and 9 postal ballots returned.
The names, membership numbers and IP addresses submitted via the online ballot were extracted to a CSV file without any corresponding voting intention and a member of the Membership Subgroup checked these against our database to ensure that these were identifiable members eligible to vote. The same was applied to the postal votes.
Six votes were discounted either as duplicated attempts, impersonation of another member, or failure to supply sufficient identifying information on the form e.g. no surname and no membership number. We determined that discounting these votes made no significant statistical alteration to the result. Meaning 233 valid votes were cast.
The CRM indicated the emails sent were received and opened by members. We were able to ascertain if the ballot link was then followed and tally this with the number of votes received.
Some members failed to receive the ballot notice on the email we had on file. As far as we could ascertain, this was due to members previously unsubscribing from the email circulation. Six requests were made for the link to be sent from members who had not received it.
Voting notices and reminders were posted on our website, emails and social media posts on X, BlueSky, Facebook and Instagram. Two posts were made on the Trust Announcement’s WhatsApp group. There were also postings on non-associated chatrooms that urged members to vote.
The turnout may appear disappointing to some, a fraction under 39.5%, but every effort was made to encourage members to vote. The Board considers this to be a democratic way to decide on a Resolution requiring a Rule change, the first in its history, and agreed to approve the result at the Board meeting on the 27th January.