It's that season again, not only across the nation but in our own little sport. Men and women awakened to the black and bitter taste of coffee and election news this morning, and we all began the day with the government we deserve, for better or worse.

As usual a very few people (on a percentage basis) made decisions on behalf of all the rest, and it wasn't just that way in the matter of congressmen and governors. That also played out in the sport of triathlon. Our new board of directors was announced day before yesterday.

Elections are like sausages, you don't want to see how they're made, but you're going to get a little taste of it in this article.

I got a call from somebody fairly "important" in our sport while over on the Big Island during Ironman week. "You won't believe what's going on down at registration!" he said, very animated. "People who live in the Western Region have their registration bags flagged, and they're being asked to vote for Sharron Ackles. Can you believe that! There's a story in that, isn't there?!"

"Well, no, there isn't," I replied. Yes, it's true that on the face of it it might seem somewhat coercive for the RD of the world's most important triathlon—one which is notoriously hard to get into—to be asking, "When we give you your official race number, would you mind handing back a filled-in ballot with my name checked?" (Of course I'm being facetious. Sharron Ackles is a classy lady and I'm sure it didn't go down quite like that, and in fact it wasn't Ackles that initiated her "get out the vote" campaign; nevertheless several with whom I spoke with said it FELT a bit like that). But I explained to my friend that substantially the same thing has been going on for weeks on the mainland, by Ackles' competitor and others running for USAT's board of directors. Ackles' friends were simply doing on her behalf what has been done to her at other events. This didn't make the process more tasteful, just more even.

At tri club meetings and at events the rank and file are perhaps surprised when they meet candidates or their charges seeking their votes. In our sport's case, these aren't simply candidates, but electioneers as well. If you're a voter it's one-stop shopping. You can get pitched for your vote, receive a ballot, checkmark it, and deliver the ballot all to the same person.

This does beg a few questions. Let us take, for example, the Kona race. Might you feel a little uneasy about voting if you went there simply to register, not to vote? Likewise anyone who received a ballot at a race in anyone else's region?

And then there's the possibility of fraud. What stops that candidate or his well-meaning helper from flipping through the ballots and discarding those not in his or her favor? The ballot is supposed to be delivered in a sealed envelope, not to be opened by anyone other than the accounting firm who tallies the voted. I trust that always occurs.

At this point an outside accountant tallies the votes. I guess this makes it all clean and pure. Ken Waugh of Waugh and Associates (the accountant) would not speak to me about the election. He let his secretary take my abuse. He apparently told her to tell me that I would have to go to Steve Locke for the actual vote tally, for "reasons of confidentiality." Since when is the actual vote tally of an election of the board of directors of a non-profit organization a secret? Maybe I'm making too much of this. Maybe it's just the accounting version of the doctor-client privilage. So I asked if an elected USAT board member could call Waugh and Assoc. and get the vote tally? At that point Mr. Waugh apparently ran out of the office, unable to field the question from his put-upon secretary.

We may or may not ever know who got how many votes, because virtually the entire office staff of USAT skedaddled on a plane to Cancun within hours of sending out a press release declaring the victors—just the winners and the losers, no numbers. To be fair, USAT's tallies have always historically been available. It would just be nice to have them when the vote is over, not a week or two later. Perhaps more people would vote if everybody took the process a bit more seriously.

It may sound like I'm jaded by all this, but that's not so. I don't yet know how I feel about our sport's election process. Perhaps it's retail politics at it's most basic level. I suppose in a way I'm glad that so much is left to the candidate, because if you REALLY WANT IT you can get yourself elected. Maybe it's good to only have those who want it that badly on our governing body's board.

I fancy myself a lover of early American history and of the Revolutionary period. Though I revere our founding fathers, I suspect I'd be gravely disappointed in many of them if I was actually there watching the process in person. I doubt much has changed and that's why, though I find much wrong with the way our sport handles its elections, it's probably not all that bad--if one grades on a curve.