Well the time has come... to elect a co-founder. We now have 16 enrolled members in our club. In the past I have gotten offers from a couple of our fine members to take on a more active role. That kind of spirit is great. I have resisted the temptation of making anyone co-founder of the club until now because of the power that person would hold. But I am willing to let my defenses down a bit and allow one outstanding member to become a co-founder of this club. I hope by doing this, it will strike a "balance" in the club and inspire a more democratic process. As a side effect, I hope more discussions will take place and more people will be attracted to our club.

I would like to exercise a bit of my administrative functions by mapping out a few ground rules. These would be requirements that the co-founder would have to live up to.

1. Be a regularly participating member. Have at least one topic, message or link to contribute weekly. You must own either a Rodeo or Passport.

2. Have a basic working knowledge of automobiles. No technical expertise is required, but be able to distinguish the basic systems in a vehicle and know their functions.

3. Be able to monitor and moderate the messages. Our club is open to anyone, therefore the co-founder must be able to monitor and remove objectionable comments or materials from the club site A.S.A.P.

4. Be able to work with the originating founder (myself) to contribute information, collaborate, and suggest ideas and directions to enhance the club.

5. There will be no discrimination on my part or the clubs as to the co-founder's race, religion, beliefs, or other factors. The aspects of one's personal life will never be a subject of discussion on our club site. A casual mentioning of observed holidays, etc. will not be considered to be an infringement on this condition.

6. Be able to function in the role as primary administrator, should the founder (myself) be unable to participate due to uncontrollable circumstances (vacation, illness, death, etc.)

7. The co-founder will NEVER invoke the administrative function of deleting the club from Yahoo! Such an action will regarded as hostile and a "breach of contract" and will result in legal action being taken against that person (To the fullest extent of the law).

8. Finally, you must like the job. If you don't get a kick out of helping others and participating, we can't use you.

Whew! I hope those of you that take the time to read all of this realizes why I’m taking such precautions. I’ve tried hard to be the “driving” force of this club (no pun intended).

How the voting process will work:

I intend for this to be a democratic voting process. Prospective candidates for the position would post a public message on our discussion board relating how they would be a good co-founder and what they would do to help the club. Only club members have the power to vote. The founder (myself) also has the ability to vote. Each member is allowed ONE VOTE ONLY. Duplicate votes from the same person will be nullified. Deliberate attempts to sway the election through manual or automatic processes will be considered invalid. Voters would cast a vote to their candidate by posting a REPLY.

* THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT *

The voters must post their votes as a REPLY to that candidate’s posting. If a person simply posts a message on the regular discussion board, THE VOTE WILL NOT COUNT. If there is any confusion as to how to do this properly, PLEASE ASK. The elections will start immediately and last until March 14^th, 09:00 Central time. At that time, any late posted votes will be ignored and all existing votes will remain on our discussion board for a period of no less than one week so that any arising disputes can be made. The results will be tallied and the winner of our elections will be formally announced on March 15th by 17:00 Central.