Scout Masters Blog
Our troop had elections yesterday, the scouts exercised their right and selected new Patrol Leaders' Council(PLC) for the troop. The elections were conducted remotely via Zoom with some ingenuity and help from Google tools by our Adult leaders. We were able to collect the votes in secrecy, tally them up in real time and announce the results soon.
Elections are always fun to conduct and you get to watch the scouts grow as confident, assertive leaders over the years. I have seen several scouts who would go to great lengths and avoid any eye contact or speak up when they first join the program. The same scout in couple of years is a PLC wannabe and comes up with creative catchy phrases to get votes. Some notable examples from my ASM days from a previous troop include, this scout during the heat of the 2016 elections had this catch phrase, " Make Troop xxx great again". Another instance, this scout tried for the SPL, ASPL, Patrol Leader, Quarter Master and always came short. Finally, his pitch was, " You've seen me long enough and I am not leaving" - he got elected as the bugler for the troop.
We had our fair share of election night promises, the new SPL promised to work to get 'No Bathroom Duties' for the summer camp - nice try! Yet another, addressed the scouts as 'Hey Besties'. The chatroom on zoom lit up soon after. Some scouts had prepared statements which worked well too. It is not easy to make a pitch before a mid size troop and seek their votes. It was heartening to see them conduct really well through out the process. We even had a tie for one of the Patrol Leader slot and the 'officials' did a recount and we resolved it with a re-election, and both contestants were remarkably civil and nice.
Oh by the way.. the transition of power was very peaceful!
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