Kiwanis Remote Voting Amendment

Talking Points

• Due to new travel restrictions, it is very difficult and in some cases not possible for Kiwanis members from other countries to gain entry into the United States. We can’t continue to require on-site attendance to vote, especially if our members who ARE willing to travel can’t get into our country or fear repercussions if they try.
• The Kiwanis International Convention loses money every year, some years as much as USD $1 million, if we could reduce the cost of voting (through the adoption of online voting for half the price of what it costs to rent hand-held devices) and collect additional revenue from remote delegates who wouldn’t have attended ICON anyway, why wouldn’t we want to do that?  The amendment allows the KI Board to set the price for a remote delegate, just as they set the price for convention registration (3-day and business session only), but we would recommend a reasonable amount such as $99, which was the cost for a business session only delegate in Denver (last year).  This amount is reasonable enough that many Kiwanis clubs who don’t send delegates in person might cover the cost for their remote voters (typically incoming club leadership) 
• Why would the KI Board reverse it’s position and oppose something that they supported last year and was supported by over 60% of the house (important to reiterate).
• The theme of this convention is “Forge the Future” and our Governors are constantly told by KI to build new clubs as their primary function, are we really expected to build clubs and tell them that they cannot have a voice in the future of the organization unless they spend thousands of dollars to send someone in person to the annual convention site.
• You will hear from a string of Kiwanis members who have been asked to speak against by the KI Board of Trustees.  In a time where we are trying to be inclusive to diverse members and attract new members, why is our leadership trying to restrict who can vote?  
• KI is livestreaming this business session today online for free to anyone who wants to watch it and they have been doing this for several years now.   Clearly, they already recognize that there is a need to allow people who are not here to see the business of the organization occur.  Why would we not also let them vote if we are able?
• Next year, our International Convention will be in Manilla, Philippines.   If you pass this amendment, your club can still have a voice in elections and amendments brought before the business session next Summer, even though you more than likely will not be attending.  
• If the Asia-Pacific region decides to propose significant amendments to change our bylaws at the 2026 International Convention, without this amendment you will have no input into those decisions.  This is the same issue that our European region and ASPAC region fellow Kiwanians have to deal with every year that ICON is located in the United States (which is most years).   
• Every year, fewer and fewer of our actual clubs are represented in this House of Delegates.  If we change nothing and continue at our current pace we will eventually reach a point we may not even have quorum to conduct business.   Why would we not want to allow other paying Kiwanis clubs the same right to vote we have.  Other organizations have adopted remote voting and experienced no decline in convention attendance as a result.    International Conventions are about celebration, fellowship and education, as well as conducting business.    Very few, if any attendees fly to the convention site in the US, solely to cast their vote at the House of Delegates.    ICON should be an inclusive event focused on ALL of Kiwanis, not a tiny segment of our clubs and a large number of delegates-at-large. 
• The KI Board just launched a 5-year pilot to create new Kiwanis Voices clubs for 18-26 year olds.   Do they honestly think that group would be ok with having to spend thousands of dollars and take time off from work to represent their new club at ICON?   Or do you think they would expect a way to participate in the business of Kiwanis online and remotely.   
  

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Proposed Procedures

While the Kiwanis International Bylaws designate that the KI Board of Trustees sets the fees and schedules of the Kiwanis International Convention, there have been several requests to understand how remote voting might operate. Here’s a possible scenario, but to be clear, this is not part of the proposed bylaws amendments, because it can’t be under our bylaws:

Fees
In-person attendees at the Kiwanis International Convention currently have their admission to the business session included in their registration fee (in Pittsburgh that’s $399). If an attendee wishes to attend JUST the Business Session, that cost this year was $199 and $99 last year in Denver. We propose that remote voting participants would be charged the SAME amount as those who register to attend only the business session in-person. This would generate additional revenue for the convention that would not have been received otherwise.

Right now, Kiwanis International spends $60,000 on rental, shipping, power and on-site staff to manage the keypad voting devices for the roughly 1200 delegates participating in the Business Session. This would be discontinued under Remote Voting as all delegates would vote online (whether in-person or remote) using the same platform. The secure online platform would be provided by one of the many providers that KI identified would work across all Kiwanis languages. The Kiwanis European Federation has successfully used SimplyVoting (1 of the 5 Kiwanis vetted providers) to conduct online voting allowing European Kiwanians to participate for the past 4 years. The cost for conducting our election and amendments online would be a small fraction of that cost and would permit all Kiwanis clubs and delegates-at-large to vote online. SimplyVoting quoted a self-managed single-ballot election (like ours would be) would cost roughly $2,400 for 15,000 delegates.

Business Session
The business session at the Kiwanis International Convention, would operate very similarly to how it does today. The session would continue to be Livestreamed online as is already done today, .so that anyone, anywhere could watch in real-time the debate on amendments and nominations and speeches of candidates.

Proposed amendments to the KI Bylaws would be moved in-person by the maker of the motion and then up for debate. Live amendments to the originally proposed amendments could be made and debated only by those present in-person. Once debate closed on the finalized version of any proposed amendment, we would move on to the next amendment without voting. Once we complete all proposed amendments and resolutions, we would move into elections. Elections would be conducted much like they are today. Delegates (in-person and watching the Livestream) would hear nominations and campaign speeches from all candidates.

Once all candidates have given their speeches, we would open the remote voting period. Each delegate would receive a ballot number to login securely to the platform and cast ONE vote. The voting would look something like this:

2026 Kiwanis International Ballot

Proposed Amendment #1
Yes
No

Proposed Amendment #2
Yes
No

Candidates for International Trustee (you must vote for two candidates):
Jane Kiwanian
Joe Kiwanian
Bob Kiwanian
Barbara Kiwanian

Candidates for International Vice President (Rank your choice -1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice):
Susan Kiwanian
George Kiwanian
Alexis Kiwanian

Candidates for International President-Elect (you may only vote for one candidate):
Steve Kiwanian

Candidates for International President (you may only vote for one candidate):
Kathy Kiwanian

What about International Trustees only elected by certain delegates (i.e. US and Pacific Canada)?
The online system would automatically only show an election to those delegates that are allowed to participate in that election, based on the location of their Kiwanis club.

What about a runoff for International Vice-President? – Kiwanis would switch to use Ranked choice voting (RCV) – an election method in​ which voters rank candidates for an office in order of their preference (first choice, second choice, third choice, and so on).  If a candidate receives more than half of the first choices, that candidate wins, just like in any other election. However, if there is no majority winner after counting the first choices, the race is decided by an instant runoff (without needing to vote again). The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and voters who ranked that candidate as their first choice will have their votes count for their next choice. This process continues until a majority winner, a candidate with more than half of the vote, wins. This would eliminate the need to have more than one vote to select a new International Vice-President.

Voting Timeframe
A lot of discussion has been made about possible Internet outages and time zone challenges, but the reality is that the KI Board can allow the remote voting timeframe to be as long as they want. We would propose that 12 hours for online voting be provided so that timezones or temporary Internet outages are mitigated.

If the Business Session were conducted on Friday morning (9am-12pm local time of the convention site), that means the results would be available no later than midnight. A closing session on Saturday morning would then allow KI to announce the results, congratulate the new officers and allow the incoming President to have their remarks. The current process to have the closing functions at the end of the Business Session severely reduces attendance of the in-person attendees as most are tired of sitting through the extra-long session and they leave before its over.

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Delegate Handout CounterPoints

KI Argument	Counter Argument
Implementing secure online voting for Kiwanis elections, amendments and resolutions would require additional costs to develop web-based resources and processes. Given the organization’s current membership needs, these funds and staff research time would be better allocated to services that strengthen existing clubs and support new club development.	The KI Task Force on Online Voting reported to the KI Board on December 1, 2014 that based on the research performed by KI staff quote  “Using online voting for elections and amendments would reduce the direct costs of voting by over 50 percent:from an annual average of US$38,250 for on-site keypad voting to an estimated US$18,000 for online voting.(This cost could be slightly further reduced in the future if Kiwanis International eventually moves from avendor-run system to a Staff-administered process.) “ In 2025, Kiwanis paid $60,000 for the remote voting devices used here in Pittsburgh. The cost of an online election for 15,000 would be $2400 self-managed or $4200 fully managed by the vendor.
This proposal could cause a decrease in the forward momentum of attendance for the annual Kiwanis International convention. A decline in convention attendance would diminish a key value of Kiwanis membership — fellowship, which fosters personal connections and the exchange of new ideas.	The KI Task Force on Online Voting reported to the KI Board on December 1, 2014 that quote  “Staff consulted other service organizations about online voting, asking for any information they would like toshare. We received responses from three who have embraced full or partial online voting: Sertoma (10,769members), Optimists (71,507 members), and Mensa (51,042 members). All threeorganizations were satisfied with their online voting experience. None saw a measurable decline in conventionattendance attributable to online voting.”   Attendance at KI Conventions has been on the decline for the past twenty years.  Despite a small bump up last year, clubs & members are prioritizing other uses for their limited funds and cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars per person to have a vote at the International Convention/  This means that in 2026 means the vast majority of the North American clubs will not be in attendance or have a voice when the convention is hosted in Manilla, Philippines, much like our friends in Europe and ASPAC don’t when the convention is held most years here in North America.
Establishing an equitable registration fee for those voting at home and for those still voting in person can generate an unnecessary distraction for the organization at a critical time when the focus must be on club strength and new club building.	Setting the SAME registration fee for those voting at home and for those still voting in person creates no distraction at all and in fact adds much needed income to the international convention.   If the annual meeting continues to be  livestreamed (as it is today), it could be watched online by any member around the world and they would simply pay to participate the same as those in person would do.
For unbiased administration of the combined in-person and remote voting, it may be necessary to ask delegates to establish a club convention fee. Costs for the organization’s convention/house of delegates should be distributed among all the constituent clubs in order to conduct the business of Kiwanis. Currently, costs are borne only by in-person attendees. The convention fee assessed for all clubs would be in addition to the registration fees for members attending in person.	If the cost of remote voting is LESS than the cost of on-site keypad voting and remote voting participants are paying a registration fee that KI wouldn’t have collected otherwise (since those members wouldn’t have attended), this would only cause MORE income to the conference and not require any discussion of a convention fee.  On a separate note, the KI Board proposed in 2010 a club convention fee of $250 per club to subsidize the budget of the annual International Convention and allow every club to send two delegates at no cost.    This proposed amendment received over 50% of the vote, but didn’t pass and was never revisited.
For officer and trustee elections, remote voting cannot replace the value of in-person interaction between delegates and candidates at an international convention. Candidates should not be elected based on who has the best website or video production. Regarding amendment proposals, hearing live debate sometimes contributes to a delegate’s voting decision, and this proposal diminishes that positive aspect.	Remote voting provides equity to our delegates that currently doesn’t exist.   Is it better to have only 10% of our clubs voting or allow reasonable access to all 100%?  Why does the KI Board and Staff not want to allow as many member clubs to participate in the election process as possible?
Remote voting could inhibit the ability of delegates to clearly amend proposed amendments. On arduous proposals, this lack of clarity may limit compromise and/or adjustments that are sometimes necessary to accommodate successful implementation of an important issue.	The amendment process is clearly defined in the proposed amendment and would still allow for debate on the floor of each and every amendment.    It is only the final version of the amended amendments that would be voted on by the entire body (including remote voters).  The Kiwanis International Board supported this exact proposed amendment last year.   Why now are they stating that there would be problems?
Sporadic outages or complications in internet service around the world during the specific time(s) of voting cannot be controlled.	The KI Board is empowered by this amendment to ensure enough time is provided in all time zones so that anyone who wants to vote could.   Right now, voting is limited to a group of people sitting in one room somewhere in the world.
With the need to communicate as frequently as necessary with every Kiwanis Club around the world in a noticeable way, the costs of campaigning for Kiwanis International offices would significantly increase. This could give wealthier candidates from larger districts a significant advantage in gaining voter attention.	If the cost of campaigning for Kiwanis International is truly a concern of the KI Board, they should propose an amendment limiting how much a candidate can spend to seek International Office, not by limiting who should be allowed to vote.
Given these challenges, implementing remote voting at this time could introduce unnecessary costs, complexities and unintended consequences that outweigh the potential benefits. Maintaining the integrity, equity and in-person engagement of the Kiwanis election process remains essential to the organization’s mission and long-term strength.	If our organization truly wants to build new clubs and grow, we need to be prepared to accept voices from everywhere, not just those that can afford to take time off from work or family and fly to some remote location (on another continent) to exercise the rights given to every Kiwanis club by our bylaws.