ABA Board Candidate Petition Deadline March 12

Candidates for the American Booksellers Association's 2008 Board of Directors elections, as recommended by ABA's Nominating Committee and approved by the Board and announced last week, are Dan Chartrand of Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, New Hampshire; Ken White of SFSU Bookstore in San Francisco; and current Board member Michael Tucker of Books Inc. in San Francisco, who is eligible for an additional three-year term. In addition to the candidates approved by the Board, ABA's bylaws stipulate that bookstore members can submit petitions to place the names of additional director candidates on the ballot.

If any bookstore member wishes to submit a petition, the following apply:

• A candidate must be an employee or owner of an ABA member bookstore. The member bookstore must be in good standing, and the individual candidate must have at least three years' experience in a bookstore-member company.
• Each petition can present only one candidate.
• All petitions must be submitted by Wednesday, March 12, 2008, to Beth Puffer, Chair, ABA Nominating Committee, c/o ABA, 200 White Plains Rd., Tarrytown, NY 10591.
• The names on the petition in support of the candidate must reflect at least two percent of ABA's bookstore members as of January 1, 2008; that is, a minimum of 32 signatures. The petition must contain original signatures, the names of the ABA member bookstore, addresses, and telephone numbers.
• The names on the petition in support of the candidate must come from at least five states, with representatives of no one state constituting more than 50 percent of the total number of petition signatures.
• Upon receipt of a valid petition, the Nominating Committee will add the petitioned candidate's name to the ballot for Board of Directors' elections sent to the membership.

At its January meeting, the Board also selected Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, as ABA President and Michael Tucker of Books Inc. as ABA Vice President/Secretary for one-year terms, beginning June 2008. Their names and those of director candidates will appear on the Board ballot, which will be mailed in late March, 60 days prior to the ABA Annual Membership Meeting, for approval by membership.

To help BTW's coverage of the election process, if any bookstore member is working to circulate a petition, please let us know by sending an e-mail to [email protected].