Hello Respected TANA Leadership
As a followup of previous communications I would like to bring few important things to your immediate attention, review and proper action.
We haven't heard of anything on the current election schedule process changes though we crossed few time lines, and it's very imperative that once the schedule comes in, the adherence of the timelines are very important statutorily and needs to follow as much as possible and need proper process to consider modification with transparent communication to the community
And now the President himself who is supposed to lead the community and the organization with utmost respect and dignity has chosen and supported one contestant who is another board member and described in public social network forum as the best of the best "unbiased" candidate for EVP even before the election schedule is declared, even before other candidates come forward to evaluate his best "unbiased" choice against others which was a surprise to the community in every aspect of "Commonly accepted principles" in a prestigious organization like TANA. And also it is very evident that about 50+% of the Board is contesting for one or other positions, and from the reports it looks like almost everyone except one or two took open sides towards the contestants. Can anyone explain how the other contestants, TANA Members and the Telugu community can be confident of a fair election process in this situation?
I have sent a friendly suggestive detailed email with few points to improve the fairness and transparency in the election with the intention of "Prevention is better than the cure". Except for some oral talks no action was informed till now. And with the news spreading in the community all around in manipulating large scale address changes (mainly with fraudulent and altered address proofs), the evil intent of manipulating the votes and election results is already in big discussion and criticism among the community and media. Since my very first concern/prediction is so correct with a lot of damage, you may expect my every other concern has potential to blow out of our hands if not taken proper care.
And as explained before we the contestants are spending lots of hard earned money and valuable time from many supporters to contest and get a fair chance to serve the beloved organization. We expect and deserve the utmost transparency and fairness in every small part of the election process and the TANA Leadership is fully responsible for it. Even if you implement all the suggestions informed by me it will be at no additional or very little extra cost and yet a big amount will be left over from the nomination fees to TANA. And so we demand the following actions immediately failing which may result in unwanted situation like that in address changes episode that's going on, that could end up on many moral as well as legal issues
1) Publish the audit log of all the address changes done in the last year or so, we don't have trust on the leadership people who is responsible in the process of updates since all of them are contesting and taken sides and lot of rumors spreading around them
2) Exclude all the 4000 memberships(around 8000 votes) being told with address updates from the election process until a fair and third party evaluate the authenticity of the addresses and proofs to support the changes. The people responsible for fraudulent manipulations like altering Utility bills, Driving licenses and others in support of address changes needs to be identified and punished under the federal laws to protect the "Fear of the laws" concept and avoid future manipulations. All the addresses that get multiple requests as a single residence to be identified and published for proper action
3) Identify all the addresses in the entire memberships where more than two memberships exist at a single residence as a suspect of manipulation and seek clarification through various means. This is the best time to clean the fraudulent and multiple memberships
4) Put a cross check on the voters list/addresses comparison between the actual voters list as on qualified date, final list submitted to the Election committee, and actual ballots printed. Need to put all the printed ballots on the table for cross verification before posting. Since everyone has taken a side and no one needs to be believed as unbiased, a cross verification is a must to avoid possible manipulations by any individual or group even permitted by the by-laws and the Board should make a note of it.
5) All the ballots printed should be put on the table for a couple of hours along with the list on the day of posting for verification by the contestants that everything is alright. Then post all the ballots into the post office in front of the contestants/representatives
6) The two separate post boxes intended to receive casted and returned ballots be shown as empty and sealed in front of everyone and keys taken into the custody of the Election committee on the day of posting.
7) the seals of the post boxes should be broken in front of all to collect the received ballot covers in separate boxes, sealed again and taken to the counting station in front of all others
8) At the counting station, the demo should be given to exhibit how the counting is fair, how the duplicates/Xerox ballots invalidate etc. Then the sealed boxes should be open and start counting while results display dynamically
I hope you all agree that all the above were very important and practical with very less cost intensive and much needed at this hour in virtue of keen contests that are going on. If we can follow all these, no one can question the election process and every one either win or loose will be conformable with the outcome.
And once again all the said 4000+ plus address change requests as many were feared of manipulated address proofs must be held immediately and excluded from the election process now until they are resolved fairly by a reputed third party and all the decisions should be taken by the neutral leadership members (if any exist). Please treat these as a cordial but serious matter of suggestion in view of the sensitivity and criticality.
Pl note that I am copying to all leadership as well few community members as a proof of my suggestions and as a contestant for the top position of Executive Vice-President and none of the content is confidential in a Non-Profit organization like TANA
Regards
Sreenivasa Gogineni 248 802 8613
Past TANA Foundation Chairman 2015-17
and
Contestant for Executive Vice-President 2021-23