APA voting members will be asked to vote in the 1997 election on an amendment to the Association's bylaws that would shorten the amount of time in which candidates for APA national office and Area trustee can campaign.

Such a change would create an election cycle that ends in January instead of February. The new cycle is expected to reduce campaign activity and the accompanying demands on candidates' time and finances.

The amendment would shorten the campaign period by changing the deadline for petitions from November 15 to October 15 or 30 days after the Nominating Committee reports its slate of candidates to the Board of Trustees, whichever is later. This date would also be the deadline for candidates to submit information for the ballot and the Psychiatric News election issue. The election issue would be published the first Friday in December instead of January, and the ballots would be mailed January 5. The deadline for returning ballots would be February 5, which under the present schedule is the mailing date.

If the amendment passes, the new schedule will become effective for the 1998 election.

The number of signatures needed to be nominated by petition remains the same. The current procedure requires 400 signatures for national office (except for member-in-training trustee-elect, which requires 100 signatures) and 100 signatures for Area trustee.

The proposed changes were the result of the Board of Trustees' asking the Elections Committee to study how the election schedule could be shortened and the campaign guidelines simplified. The request was initiated in response to concerns from members and candidates alike that a professional organization should not have a long, drawn-out electoral process that exhausts the candidates, may be destructive to their professional activities, allows an opportunity for negative campaigning to occur, and deprofessionalizes the image of psychiatry.

The amendment was approved by the Board of Trustees in March and read to the membership at the annual business meeting at APA's 1996 annual meeting in May.

(Psychiatric News, October 18, 1996)