HARA members should have received their ballots for the HARA Board of Governors election last week. If you did, please mail them by Friday, October 16, 2009. If you did not receive one please contact the HARA office by calling (808) 593-9424 or (808) 548-9424.

I also have some thoughts I’d like to share on the email blasts which have been sent out from the HARA office in support of certain candidates over the past week.

HARA does offer a service to all HARA members – the use of HARA’s member postal and email list to distribute information. This is a paid service, and the cost depends on which service you use, and in the case of postal mail, what kind of mail it is (postcard, letter, CD/DVD package, etc.) The most common use of this service is during the voting process for the Nā Hōkū Hanohano awards – artists and labels can use the service to send out postcards, letters, copies of CDs or “email blasts” to inform members about their entries and nominees.

I have no problem with HARA offering this service. In the case of both Nā Hōkū and Board of Governor voting, it can help to level the playing field – artists and those seeking a seat on the Board of Governors who are less known by the membership have the opportunity to let potential voters know about their releases or candidacy.

I have some reservations about a recent email blast that went out in support of a substantial list of candidates – 11 candidates were endorsed by a group only identified as “their friends and family”, even though only five seats are open for the election. I learned from our office staff that the endorser(s) requested anonymity, which I found even more troubling. I began to wonder if the endorsement was as much an endorsement of those candidates, or against those not listed as there were far more listed on the endoresment than were not.

I have discussed this situation with some of my colleagues on the Board of Governors, and we will be addressing it at our meeting this week. I’m still not sure how I really feel about this. Regardless, members should know that no email blast that comes from the HARA office is an endoresment by HARA or its Board of Governors, and this fact is stated clearly in each email blast that goes out.

If any HARA member has a strong feeling one way or another about this service in either context – for Nā Hōkū Hanohano voting or for the Board of Governor election, please feel free to share your thoughts with me.

The HARA Board of Governors will be holding its annual retreat this weekend in Honolulu. I invite any HARA members to send me their concerns, questions or other mana‘o, and I will bring them up in front of the board. Connectivity allowing, I may even tweet during the meeting (follow me on Twitter here).