Parish Election Reports

At every annual meeting, a congregation elects members of the vestry (or in the case of a mission, a mission committee). Depending on its bylaws, either the congregation or the vestry also elects the wardens and the convention delegates. This information must be certified and on file with the Convention and Governance Office at Church House. All forms connected with this must be dated and signed by the rector, senior warden or secretary of the vestry.

Once the forms are on file, the master voting list will be changed at Church House, which, among other things, means that wardens and delegates will start to receive information about upcoming events, training sessions, etc. All delegates and and alternate delegates must be certified no later than 30 days prior to Convention.

Wardens and delegates are all eligible to vote at the Regional Assemblies in October, and should plan to attend. Only delegates are eligible to vote at the annual meeting of the Convention. A copy of "On Being a Convention Delegate" gives information about Regional Assemblies and Convention.

Following the election of vestry (or mission committee) and convention delegates by each congregation, the following forms should be completed and sent to Church House.

Vestry & Mission Committee Elections

Help on election forms

Vestry Election Form: word | pdf

Mission Committee Election Form: word | pdf

Convention Delegate Elections

Help on convention delegates form

How many delegates per congregations?

On Being a Convention Delegate

Certification of Convention Delegates Form: word | pdf 

 

FAQ's on Election Forms

Do I have to fill out these forms by hand?
It is not necessary to complete the forms by hand. To type your responses simply save the forms on your computer in the format you prefer — Word or Adobe PDF — click your cursor on a line and start typing.

Can I call with the changes?
No. In the case of wardens and delegates, it's a matter of enfranchising and disenfrachising people, so changes must be certified.

Why doesn't the new warden receive Church House News?
It means that we don't have the forms on file. Either the parish office hasn't sent them in or they were never received. You should have kept a copy – send us a copy of that.

Who can sign the forms?
According to our canons (church law), only the rector, senior warden or secretary of the vestry may sign. No, the associate rector may not sign. No, the parish secretary may not sign, unless that person is also the secretary of the vestry. Note that the rector doesn't have to fill it out – only sign it.

If our annual meeting is in January, can the delegates elected then be seated at the Convention at the end of the month?
No, they must be certified no later than 30 days prior to the Convention. No, we aren't going to make exceptions to that just because that's when you hold your meeting – your bylaws have to conform to diocesan canons, not the other way around. Ask yourself this question – do you really want to be represented by people who have had absolutely no preliminary information on which to base their votes for the diocesan budget, various elective offices, canonical changes, etc.?

Why aren't our alternate delegates receiving the same information as the delegates?
Delegations need to share information and talk to one another. The practical reason is that there are not enough resources to maintain that many more people in the database or to do that many more mailings. More and more of this information can be found on the Convention Website.

How many delegates do we get, and how do we get more?
There's a complicated formula applied every year based on average attendance. See information on delegate apportionment.

Table 3 in the Journal shows that we're only a few people short of the number needed for an additional delegate. We've had more people in church, so we get an additional delegate, right?
Maybe. It depends on where your average attendance falls in relationship to every other congregation in the Diocese. If everyone else has had a growth spurt, it's not impossible for the number of your delegates to go down. Remember, this is re-computed every year.

How will we know when the number of delegates changes?
You can look in Table 3 of the Journal or wait until we send you a letter the week after Regional Assemblies. Note that the delegate apportionment does not change until the next Convention – the change does not apply to that next Regional Assembly.

How many alternate delegates do we get?
Our canons do not address this. If your bylaws don't address it either, a rough rule of thumb is to have it be an equal number. Just remember that they have to be certified no less than 30 days before the Convention as well, so if you only have one delegate, you may wish to certify more than one alternate, just in case.

 

Delegate Apportionment – How many Delegates per Congregation?

Every congregation is entitled to send 1-5 lay delegates to the annual meeting of the Diocesan Convention. A chart laying out the delegate apportionment for the next Convention (Table 3) is computed in the summer and printed in the back of the Diocesan Journal and Directory.

Our constitution guarantees every congregation one vote. Our canons then provide for up to four additional delegates for parishes, separate congregations and organized missions. One of the extra pages of each congregation's parochial report asks for the attendance figures for the four Key Sundays in the past year (Advent I, Lent I, Easter and Pentecost). The median of the average of the last three years attendance for these four Key Sundays (that's a total of 12 Sundays) is computed, and a formula is applied. That means that one-half of the congregations are entitled to one delegate, and the larger congregations are entitled proportionately to more.

The formula, according to Canon 2, Sec. 2 is:

(c) Parishes, Separate Congregations and Organized Missions: In addition to the one Lay Delegate authorized under Article 2, Section 4(a), a Parish, Separate Congregation or Organized Mission shall be entitled to no more than four additional Lay Delegates determined as follows:
 
(i) Within one calendar month of the final date for receipt of the Annual Reports, the Secretary shall average the attendance from the Annual Reports of each Parish, Separate Congregation and Organized Mission at the following services for the most recent three year period: (A) Advent I, (B) Lent I, (C) Easter Day, and (D) Pentecost. If a Parish, Separate Congregation or Organized Mission has not filed its annual report for the previous year, the Secretary shall count the attendance for each service in that year as zero. This shall be the average attendance.

(ii) The Secretary shall determine the median attendance number, to which the average attendance determined under paragraph (c)(i) above, of each parish, Separate Congregation or Organized Mission shall be compared and the number of Lay Delegates of each determined as follows:

    * The median and less no additional delegate
    * Over the median to twice the median 1 additional delegate
    * Over twice the median to three times the median 2 additional delegates
    * Over three times the median to four times the median 3 additional delegates
    * Over four times the median 4 additional delegates