ESA Has Real Elections, SIA Refuses

While the Security Industry Association (SIA) refuses to have real elections, the Electronic Security Association (ESA) supports them.

In this report, we examine the differences between the two associations' board election systems, how ESA offers greater real choice, feedback from SIA, and why SIA has gotten worse.

Real Elections Encourage True Diversity

Fake or sham elections encourage insiders to control organizations for their own benefit rather than encouraging a true diversity of thought, experience, and background. Insider-based selection processes are self-reinforcing in that existing leadership will tend to recruit more individuals that think like and are like themselves. By contrast, fair and competitive elections provide 'feedback' that helps ensure leadership reflects the membership's diversity, and is responsive to their interests.

Problems with SIA Elections

While SIA's board is, in theory, elected by its membership, in practice, members' votes have no practical impact.

Nominees are selected via a secretive process overseen by a 3-5 person SIA board committee. Previously, it was possible for members to nominate someone for the board via petition, but a bylaws amendment in 2021 removed this option. SIA does now allow members to submit "candidates for consideration by the Nominations Committee," but that committee has complete discretion to pick whomever they want without review or recourse.

As explained in SIA's bylaws, each year, SIA presents members with a slate of "candidates" at its annual meeting, The Advance, during ISC West. The number of individuals is the same as the number of open positions, avoiding any competitive elections. Furthermore, SIA does not permit members to vote against individual candidates, only allowing them to accept or reject the entire slate.

SIA has no mechanism for dealing with the possibility that "no" votes prevail, as SIA understands this is not an actual election.

Comparison with ESA

By comparison, the Electronic Security Association has actual elections.

Importantly, ESA allows competitive elections with more nominees than there are open positions, and members can vote yes or no on individual candidates as opposed to the entire group. In this year's election, five people are running for one spot as Associate Member Director.

Four months prior to the start of voting, ESA announced "a call for nominations to all voting members." As ESA's bylaws explain, similar to SIA, a Nomination Committee "will determine whether each potential nominee meets the requirements for the applicable Director position." But unlike SIA, this committee is not selecting board members so much as it is vetting them for elections.

Additionally, there are stronger protections over the Nominating Committee in place. The committee has seven members, none of whom may be on it for more than six consecutive years, and neither ESA's Chairman nor Chairman elect can be chairman of the Committee.

Uncontested elections can and do occur, but in such cases, ESA does not go through the charade of a voting process. Instead, they are "elected by acclamation."

Response from SIA

IPVM contacted SIA for comment, receiving the following response from Sr. Director of Marketing Geoff Kohl, emphasizing improvements:

In recent years, the SIA Board of Directors adopted changes to improve its Board nominations policies and procedures, which were reflective of widely accepted practices by corporate trade associations.

SIA Bylaws modifications included a new requirement for SIA to issue a 120-day notice to members describing the opportunity for any member to nominate candidates for consideration by the Nominations Committee. SIA also expanded the representation on its Nominations Committee to broaden the perspectives offered during committee deliberations. The changes attracted candidates with diverse backgrounds and expertise aligned with the volunteer leadership needs of the organization and consistent with the SIA Strategic Plan. In the end, these new policies have made Board nominating procedures more transparent and open to all SIA members for participation in the nominations process. SIA is pleased to consider additional suggestions from our members to further elevate our governance procedures.

However, as we explained above, the process has become less transparent and less open with the removal of nominations by petition and the centralization of selection via the closed nominations committee.

SIA Should Be More Democratic

SIA can function better as an organization if it is accountable to its membership, rather just than to insiders as the current system allows. Accountability requires that their votes are meaningful, which can only occur if the system allows for a candidate to be defeated. In addition to an opaque nomination process, SIA's requirement of voting for or against an entire slate of candidates is neither a reasonable nor effective participatory system.