Success Story: State Bar of Georgia

“It is nice to have an ‘election problem solver’ in your corner when issues with the process arise or when we just want advice on how to handle certain election situations.” ~ Judy Hill, Assistant Director of Membership and Elections Committee Staff Liaison, State Bar of Georgia

Client Profile:

Formed in 1964, the State Bar of Georgia is the mandatory bar association of lawyers admitted to practice in Georgia. It evolved from the Georgia Bar Association which was founded in 1883. Currently consisting of 36,000 active members, its mission is to foster among the members the principles of duty and service to the public; to improve the administration of justice and to advance the science of law.

Election Challenge:

Our annual election is a hybrid voting process where statewide officers, Board of Governors members and American Bar Association delegates are elected on a rotating basis. Due to the nature of our membership, the challenge of our election is to show complete transparency and follow every detail of our bylaws to the letter. We cannot afford a “challenged election” situation.

To make wise use of the Bar’s financial resources, it was decided to bid out our election project. We were initially hesitant to change vendors since we had been using the same company for many years with positive results and very few problems. They knew our process, how we were required to run the election and we weren’t excited about the possibility of bringing a new partner up to speed on the process.

SBS Solution:

We learned of Survey & Ballot Systems (SBS) through contact from one of their sales representatives with the department director. This led to the decision to include SBS as one of the bidding vendors. During the bid process, SBS personnel answered every question thoroughly, submitted a price competitive quote and demonstrated that they could offer more voting technology options than we had used in the past. In addition, we felt that SBS was in tune with our needs – our questions were answered quickly and thoroughly, and if an extra question or request came up, they were on it. At the end of the process, it was decided that we would switch vendors and use SBS services for the State Bar of Georgia’s election.

We have utilized SBS for the past several years, and are still extremely pleased with our choice. SBS has enhanced member voting by coming up with ideas to improve participation, helped us save money by allowing some members to move to online voting exclusively and have implemented SBS’ Single Sign-On technology allowing the voter to login right from our organization’s website.

The service is fantastic. Issues and questions are answered promptly and our voting process gets rave reviews from members. It is nice to have an ‘election problem solver’ in your corner when issues with the process arise or when we just want advice on how to handle certain election situations. We can tell that SBS has been doing this for quite some time and has a deep knowledge of private-member voting.

SBS has made it much easier to deal with our voting event and protect our election process. They are a cooperative, smart, and efficient group of people – working with them is a pleasure.