Elections

No. Please only attend your allocatted unit area gathering and elect from names in your own unit area voting list.

If you are a believer aged 18 years and older, you will have received your election call letter around the week of 20 March 2023.  The letter includes all the relevant dates and venue information as well as the voting list of local inhabitants for your unit area.

If you have not received your letter of invitation, please email the secretariat on secretariat@brisbane.bahai.org.au.

If you have not received your letter of invitation which includes the list of names, please email the secretariat on secretariat@brisbane.bahai.org.au

Only elected delegates attend the delegates gathering.

No – unfortunately your vote will not count. If you are unable to attend your own unit area gathering, you can either mail your postal ballot as per the guidelines in your election call letter OR pass it to a friend (with the correct authorisation) who is listed in your unit area voting list to submit it as an absentee ballot.

The community will be informed of the results of the election after each stage as soon as possible and practicable.

At the bottom of the letter of invitation to take part in elections, there is an offer to contact the secretariat if a translation of any part of the letter is required. Friends need only contact the secretariat (secretariat@brisbane.bahai.org.au) or leave a message on the telephone of the Brisbane Assembly 3367 3303.

The House of Justice described this method as follows:

Similar in many respects to the election of a National Spiritual Assembly, it involves the division of a locality into units from each of which one or more delegates are elected, after which the delegates elect the members of the Local Assembly. As the number of Bahá’ís residing in a locality grows large and the community’s capacity for managing complexity increases, the case for implementing a two-stage electoral process becomes commensurately stronger. Accordingly, in the coming Plan, we expect to authorize the adoption of this method for electing a Local Assembly in many more places, both urban and rural, where conditions make such a step timely

• Election of 19 delegates for Brisbane City
• Preferably two delegates from each unit area
• Division of Brisbane into nine units (eight units with 2 delegates and one unit with 3 delegates) with an ideal ratio of 1 delegate per 42 believers (Brisbane having approximately 800 adults at this point in time)
• Leveraging proximity to maximise the friends’ familiarity with each other’s qualities
• Maximising universal participation
• Minimising or avoiding invalid votes (e.g., voting for people outside Brisbane; voting for people in Brisbane but outside the unit area, duplication of names)

As our community grows, it will not be possible to know each and all. On the national and international scale, it is similarly not possible to know the qualities of all those who are eligible to be elected.

In electing delegates from the friends in your unit area, electors are asked to prayerfully consider the qualities of those who you do know, keeping in mind the qualities that the beloved Guardian has proposed (see guidance enclosed in election call) in consideration of additional guidance from the message of the Universal House of Justice (16 May 2016 ) where it quotes the Guardian “Instead, the Guardian expected those assembled to “approach their task with absolute detachment” and “concentrate their attention on the most important and pressing issues” in order to obtain a “deeper and broader vision of the Cause through an increase in the spirit of unity and of whole hearted co-operation.” “The unfettered freedom of the individual should be tempered with mutual consultation and sacrifice,” he explained, “and the spirit of initiative and enterprise should be reinforced by a deeper realization of the supreme necessity for concerted action and a fuller devotion to the common weal.”