Time is running out to get your ballots in to the NRA’s tabulator. They must be received by April 6th. If you haven’t mailed your ballot yet, you need to do so now.
The question often asked is “can I vote online” and the answer unfortunately is no. That is one of the things I will be working to change as I have written about in the past.
There are 13 days left until the ballots for the NRA Board of Director election must be received with the tabulating firm in Dun Loring, Virginia. As the factoid below from the Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association illustrates, enough ballots were received late that they could have impacted the outcome of the election for some candidates.
If you have not voted yet, dig that February issue of the NRA magazine out of that pile of mail you put aside to read later. I would urge you in the strongest possible terms to vote for the NRA 2.0 reform ticket. You can find a list of the candidates here. Do not vote for more than 28 candidates total! Don’t forget to vote for the two write-in candidates – Paul Babaz of Atlanta, GA and Charles Brown of Dayton, OH. You must include their cities of residence.
To get an idea of how long it would take for your ballot to arrive in Dun Loring, VA, I ran the estimated times of delivery for a ballot sent tomorrow morning for a number of US cities. Rural areas will probably take even longer. In my experience, estimated times of delivery are the best case.
Thus, it will take anywhere from three to six days for delivery from the time you mail the ballot. Even if you mailed it from Fairfax County, VA, it will take two days. If you wait until next Monday to mail it, you might make it but I would not count on it.
With only 20 days to go before all ballots must be received by the NRA’s tabulating firm, this last factoid from the Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association is an interesting note. With 49 candidates on the ballot plus another two write-in candidates, I think this number may drop even with people voting the full slate of NRA 2.0 candidates.
Now that we know that a total of 30 candidates will be elected, it is critical to remember that your ballot can only contain 28 selections including the two write-ins. Any more than that and it will be trashed as invalid. The passing of Walt Walter and the pending resignation of Ken Blackwell are what have opened up the extra two slots on the board.
Falls Township made this observation about the implications of the post above.
Reformers can win! In previous elections, the difference between popular insider candidates and the ones who barely got elected was a huge.
In recent years, the races have narrowed dramatically. Members are spreading their votes out and not voting for insider candidates as frequently.
In what should not surprise anyone, voting participation in the NRA Board of Directors election has dropped by almost half since 2019. That year the percentage of members voting was 5.95% which is not that great in and of itself. In 2024, it was 3.16%. Over that same time period membership in the NRA has dropped by almost two million members.
We have 27 days left in which to reverse this trend and to elect the NRA 2.0 slate of candidates. Ballots must be received by April 6th. Given that April 6th is a Sunday, I’m am thinking a day or so earlier is the absolute cut-off for your ballot to be received.
Given everything that has been revealed since the 2019 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, it is no wonder that members have left and voting has dropped off. This year is our chance to reverse the voting trend, clean house, and give the NRA a chance to regain its strength. By cleaning house, I mean defeating those who stood by while Wayne and company were merrily grifting away. The old guard, the Friends of Wayne, the cabal, or whatever you want to call them have stood in the way of change and are trying to get elected on the basis of old, sometimes very old, accomplishments. Their time is past.
Now it is time to elect those who stand for accountability, integrity, and, most of all, transparency.
Thanks to the Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association for creating the NRA Voting Facts series.
In another voting facts factoid from the Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association, we learn that in the last five NRA Board elections that it took an average of 51,774 votes to be elected.
If what I’m hearing on the ground is accurate, it should take more than that to be elected. The reason being is that I’m hearing from long time members that they plan to vote for the first time. Moreover, they plan to vote for NRA 2.0 and reform.
If you have friends who are NRA members, ask them if they are a voting member? Ask them if they have voted yet? If they answer no, tell them they need to vote and they need to vote for NRA 2.0. While it might be nice to see the NRA returned to its former prominence, I am more concerned about it being an effective advocate for the Second Amendment and not worrying about who gets the credit for the win.
Go to ElectANewNRA.com to see the whole slate.
The factoids from Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association illustrate that voter turnout in the NRA Board elections is terrible. Indeed, to put it bluntly, a fraction about 3 percent is an embarrassment.
I think the Dallas Safari Club might be on to something. Not only have they gone to online voting but they are offering an inducement to increase voter participation.
If the chance to win a $4,000 +/- rifle doesn’t induce you to vote, then nothing will.
In another illustration of how so few eligible NRA voting members actually vote is this factoid from the Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association.
Thanks to Bitter and the Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association for compiling these numbers. Imagine a NRA if a million members voted for change, reform, and NRA 2.0. Nothing could stop us!
I received an email this morning from NRA Secretary John Frazer which clarifies the deadline to become a voting member eligible to vote in the 2025 NRA Board of Directors election. The deadline is March 7th.
Here is the email from Frazer:
To: Board and Executive Council members
2025 Board of Directors candidates
We’ve received a couple of questions about the voting eligibility of members who paid their Life membership dues in January or February.
Under the Bylaws, anyone who is a fully paid Life member (or reaches the five-year mark of annual membership) at least 50 days before the Annual Meeting of Members is eligible to vote. This year, that date is March 7.
However, anyone who becomes eligible after late December wouldn’t get a ballot in the February magazines (or the initial first-class mailing for overseas ballots). Members who qualify to vote between that initial data pull and March 7 will receive a ballot by first-class mail around March 11.
Based on the questions we’ve received and some social media posts, it appears that our Membership call center may not have communicated that clearly. We’ve reminded the call center about this timeline.
Anyone who joined early enough to get a ballot in the initial mailing, but still hasn’t received one, can contact Membership to verify their ballot status, and request a replacement if appropriate.
Many thanks to those who called this to our attention, and please let me know if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
John Frazer
Secretary
National Rifle Association of America
11250 Waples Mill Rd.
Fairfax, VA 22030
So if you are planning on buying or upgrading to a Life Membership so that you can vote in this election, your deadline to do so is March 7th.
The half price Life Membership offer at $750 has reportedly expired. However, it is still listed online here. If you are considering becoming a Life Member, do it now and take advantage of that discount. I sincerely doubt that the days of the $300 “friends and family” Life Memberships will ever return.
One of the questions I have been getting with some frequency as a candidate for the NRA Board of Directors is, “Can I vote online?” I have to answer that they cannot and they must use the paper ballot that was mailed to them in the February issue of the various NRA magazines.
It is a reasonable question and with today’s technology the question really should be “Why can’t I?” We vote proxies for multi-billion dollar public companies online all the time with the option to use a paper ballot. We use DocuSign to sign off securely on mortgages and financial transactions. Judge Cohen called the paper and ink petition signature gathering process as very “20th Century” and “antiquated”. In his Final Order, while permitting the paper petitions to remain, he said the NRA must provide an online alternative.
It is doable and I know it is doable because I just voted that way this evening for the Dallas Safari Club Board of Directors. I realize that DSC is a much smaller organization but I can’t see why it could not work for a larger organization like the NRA.
I was given an Election Code and Voting PIN. The ballot had the names of five candidates plus spaces for three write-in candidates. I could vote for up to three candidates. I ended up voting for only two and the system questioned whether I wanted to vote for a third candidate before submitting my vote. I didn’t and it went through with no troubles. As you can see above, I even got a confirm that it was a success.
This system was run by a company called YesElections which was formerly known as Election-America, Inc. According to a PDF e-book that I downloaded, they are able to handle hybrid elections where members are sent a paper ballot with the option to vote it online.
I plan to follow up with them this week and ask is there a maximum limit on the number of voters that they can handle. I know there are other companies like ProxyVote that handle millions of proxy votes during Annual Meeting season. While the latter is exclusively for the financial world, YesElections seems to work with a wider range of clients ranging from associations to unions to educational institutions.
Read their e-book yourself. Can you think of any reason something like this could not be implemented for the 2026 NRA Board of Directors’ election?
I can’t.
Our friends at the Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association have been doing a deep dive into the voting statistics of the NRA. I used to say about 5% of voting members voted in each recent election. I was wrong. It is only marginally more than 3%! I have seen a greater turnout for municipal elections for coroner and Soil & Water Commissioner.
What this means is that the members of your average moderate sized gun club, if NRA voting members, could swing an election. The difference between being on the Board and being a runner-up is usually somewhere around 325 votes.
by