Attention: Full ARRL members in the PACIFIC, ROCKY MOUNTAIN, SOUTHEASTERN, SOUTHWESTERN, and WEST GULF Divisions. You have the opportunity to choose a Director and Vice Director to represent you for 3-year terms beginning January 1, 2026.

ARRL is governed by its Board of Directors. A voting Director is chosen by ballot by the full (licensed) ARRL members in each of its 15 divisions. Vice Directors, who serve in the absence of the Director at a Board meeting and succeed to the position of Director should a vacancy occur, are chosen at the same time. Elections are held in five divisions per year. It only takes 10 full members in a division to nominate a candidate for either office.

Qualifications

The eligibility of nominees for the positions of ARRL Director and Vice Director will be reviewed by the Ethics & Elections Committee, composed of three Directors not subject to election this year: Scott Yonally, N8SY, Brent Walls, N9BA, and Tom Frenaye, K1KI. A nominee must be at least 21 years old and must have been licensed and a full member of ARRL for a continuous term of at least 4 years immediately preceding nomination. Each nominee must provide information concerning their employment, ownership, investment interests, and other financial arrangements to ensure compliance with the Conflict of Interest Policy (see Article 12 of the ARRL Articles of Association and By-laws 18 - 24), available at www.arrl.org/general-information. The qualifications for Director and Vice Director are identical. All the powers of the Director are transferred to the Vice Director in the event of the Director's resignation, recall, removal outside the division, inability to serve, or death.

Nomination Procedure

Step 1: Obtain official nominating petition forms. Starting July 1, any full member residing in a division where there is an election may request an official nominating petition package in writing, either by letter or via email, to execadmin@arrl.org. The request must reach the ARRL Secretary no later than noon EDT on Friday, August 8, 2025. If you are seriously considering running or nominating someone to run, please don't wait until the last minute to request the forms: the deadline for submitting a completed petition form is just one week later.

Step 2: Complete the questionnaire and obtain signatures. Only the official form may be used. The candidate must complete page one, providing the information required to determine eligibility, certifying its accuracy, and agreeing to assume the office if elected. To be valid, a nominating petition must name the candidate and must bear the signatures of 10 full members of the division.

Step 3: Submit the petition form. The completed form must reach the Secretary no later than noon EDT on Friday, August 15, 2025. The submission may be made by electronic transmission of images (i.e., a PDF or JPEG attachment to an e-mail) or facsimile provided that upon request, the original documents are received by the Secretary within 7 days of the request. A person who is nominated for both Director and Vice Director may choose to decline the nomination for Director; otherwise, the nomination for Director will stand and that for Vice Director will be void.

On Monday, August 18, 2025, the Secretary will notify each candidate of the name and call sign of each other candidate for the same office. Candidates will then have until Friday, August 29, 2025, to submit a 300-word statement and a photograph if they desire those to be made available to voters in accordance with instructions that will be supplied.

Balloting

If there is only one eligible candidate for an office, he or she will be declared elected by the Ethics & Elections Committee. If there is more than one eligible candidate for an office, the full members in that division who are in good standing as of September 10, 2025, will have the opportunity to cast ballots. Official voting documents will be mailed to members who are eligible to vote no later than October 1, 2025. Votes must be electronically cast or completed paper ballots must be received at the designated PO Box in the envelope provided by noon Eastern Time on Friday, November 21, 2025. The candidate receiving the most votes will be declared the winner that day.

Absentee Ballots

A full member who is residing temporarily outside his or her home division, including overseas, may arrange to vote in the home division by notifying the Secretary before September 6, 2025, giving their current mailing address as reflected in the ARRL membership records (i.e. QST mailing address) and the reason why another division is considered home. Members with overseas military addresses should take special note of this provision; in the absence of information received to the contrary, ballots will be sent to them based on their postal addresses.

The Incumbents

The incumbent Directors and Vice Directors, respectively, in the five divisions in which elections will be held this year are: Pacific: John Litz, NZ6Q; Rocky Mountain: Jeff Ryan, K0RM, and Dan Grady, N2SRK; Southeastern: Mickey Baker, N4MB, and Andy Milluzzi, KK4LWR; Southwestern: Dick Norton, N6AA, and Ned Stearns, AA7A; and West Gulf: John Robert Stratton, N5AUS, and Lee Cooper, W5LHC.