As the NAACP’s biggest event of the year and second in-person meeting since 2019, the stakes were high during the organization’s 114th national convention held in Boston. Starting on July 28th and running till August 1st, hundreds of voting delegates convened in Boston to vote on a variety of hot-button topics like LGBTQ+ rights, gun control, environmental protection, police training, and more.
In a world where technology is rapidly shaping various aspects of our lives, it comes as no surprise that even traditional institutions like the Moravian Church are embracing digital innovations. The recent Moravian Church Synod held in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, made waves by adopting an electronic voting system. This move marked a significant step forward, streamlining the voting process and ensuring greater inclusivity and transparency within the congregation.
Whether it be Seventh Day Adventists, the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, or the Snoqualmie Indian tribe, religious and tribal organizations across the country are meeting to elect officials and make important decisions for the future. That’s why religious and tribal groups of all sizes have been making the switch to Meridia’s TownVOTE electronic voting system, which proved to be the perfect alternative to the time-consuming process of counting votes manually.
Every five years, various 7th Day Adventist conferences meet to discuss and deliberate issues, bylaw changes, and more. Traditionally, all voting during these events was handled by pen-and-paper ballots and manual vote-counting. While this process allowed the conferences to conduct a secret ballot, the process was often stressful, tedious, and time-consuming.
The Churches of God Eastern Regional Conference had used paper ballots for many years before switching to Meridia’s TownVOTE electronic voting system in April 2022. During this meeting, the conference used electronic voting for the first time to vote on new council members, as well as a large vote for a delegation of people they plan to send to their national conference.
The democratic process can be found in organizations large and small, and nowhere is this more true than the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, where the organization conducted two types of votes to elect their president and select grant funding with the help of TownVOTE electronic voting software and keypads.
An audience response system enables the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania to vote on annual meeting measures in a fraction of the time the scantron systems used to take. “We’ve taken what had been a 45-minute process and reduced it to 10 minutes,” says Jeremiah Mustered, Executive Assistant to the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.
Church membership is in decline, and the parish church is feeling it most acutely. Strengthening the community may involve changing the community, and that’s rarely easy.
Like many religious institutions in the United States, the Catholic Church has struggled over the last decades. Fewer families are joining established churches and parishes are shrinking. What changes needed to be made to ensure the vitality of the Pittsburgh Diocese?
Discussions about voting don’t seem like they’d often turn toward houses of worship. But just like any large organization that depends on the governance of its members to run, religious organizations are faced with several the same challenges.
