Wednesday, July 1, 2009 5 PM ET
US Annual Conferences Finish Voting on Proposed Constitutional Amendments
All 62 U.S. annual conferences have now voted on the proposed constitutional amendments. Forty-seven have released complete vote tallies on all of the proposed amendments. Here are the results from those conferences on the most contentious proposed amendments:
Proposed amendment 1, which would dramatically liberalize membership standards, has failed to receive two-thirds support in 35 of the 47 annual conferences reporting results. For the 47 reporting actual tallies, the overall results stand as follows:
Proposed amendment 1: 17,072 (48%) Yes / 18,189 (52%) No
For a proposed amendment to be ratified, 66.67 percent of all the world wide annual conference delegates present and voting must vote yes. Proposed amendment 1 remains far short of ratification.
The 23 proposed amendments on the World Wide Nature of the UM Church have failed to receive two-thirds support in 36 of the 47 annual conferences posting results. Five of the 23 proposed amendments would authorize the creation of regional conferences. Here are the total results from the 47 annual conferences that have reported vote tallies for those five amendments:
Proposed amendment 4: 13,038 (37%) Yes / 22,273 (63%) No
Proposed amendment 10: 12,962 (37%) Yes / 22,406 (63%) No
Proposed amendment 13: 13,149 (37%) Yes / 22,176 (63%) No
Proposed amendment 23: 12,853 (36%) Yes / 22,473 (64%) No
Proposed amendment 26: 12,776 (37%) Yes / 22,123 (63%) No
Proposed amendment 19, which would extend to provisional members and certain local pastors the right to vote for clergy delegates to the General and jurisdictional conferences, has received substantial support. Here are the total tallies from the 47 annual conferences that have released information:
Proposed amendment 19: 26,184 (77%) Yes / 7,872 (23%) No
In 2005, the last time annual conferences world wide voted on a constitutional matter, there were approximately 2,000 total votes cast in the central conferences. Given the heightened interest in the current proposed amendments and the dramatic growth in many annual conferences beyond the U.S., it seems possible that as many as 4,000 votes may come from the central conferences this year.
It would appear to be the case that proposed amendment 19 will be ratified, and that proposed amendment 1 and all 23 of the proposed amendments seeking to restructure the denomination will be soundly defeated.
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Please note, if you are aware of official and publicly shared voting results that we have not included in this update, please share them with us (wbfenton@goodnewsmag.org). Thank you.