Election for at large members of the steering committee

[John Messing <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

Dear LegalXML Members

We have experienced a series of unfortunate mishaps with our 2007
at-large election process. I believe you are entitled to an
explanation. This year the Steering Committee worked out new election
procedures with OASIS to bring our process more in line with OASIS
voting, which includes organizational and individual membership
participation in LegalXML rather than purely individual TC memberships
as in the past. We encountered a few rough spots in this first
implementation, including the discovery on the most recent ballot that
our list of eligible voters supplied by OASIS was incomplete and would
have excluded approximately a quarter of our electorate from voting had
the election gone forward as planned. We are informally preparing
guidelines so the experience should not be repeated in future years.

The Steering Committee is reopening the nominations effectively
immediately. The nominations will remain open until the close of
business on Dec. 29th, 2006, after which they will be closed
definitively. Voting will commence on January 3, and will close on the
evening of the 8th, to allow newly-elected members of the Steering
Committee at least two days prior to the Januuary meeting of the
Steering Committee.

The current nominees will not have to be renominated. They include Jim
Cabral, Don Bergeron and Tom Clarke. Any communication nominating or
self-nominating an additional candidate should be sent to Roger
Winters, Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV, who will copy such communications
to the appropriate list(s). All further communications between either
the Chair or Secretary in their respective roles and any nominee shall
also be posted to the Steering Committee list. This will ensure
transparency of the nomination process.

These difficulties in implementing the new election procedures have
highlighted a need for me to devote my energies to working closely as
Chair with the Secretary in the conduct and administration of the new
elections. This withdrawal from the election will not affect my
continuation as Chair of the Member Section or as a member of the
Steering Committee in 2007, and will remove any appearance of
impropriety from a dual role as joint administrator of an election and
a candidate in the same election.

Instead, I am nominating Mark Ladd to serve. The text of my nominating
statement follows below.

I apologize for any inconvenience. Like they say, please excuse our
growing pains.

Best wishes for a happy holiday to all.

John Messing


=========================================================

I nominate Mark Ladd as an at large representative to the LegalXML
Steering Committee from the Member Section.

Mark is the designated representative to LegalXML of the Property
Records Industry Association, which is a nationwide association of land
recorders for electronic filing of land titles and liens.

Currently he is the Secretary of the eNotary TC.

Mark has conscientiously established relations with the EFTC and
attended the 2006 New York face-to-face. He has generated a proposal to
both EFTC and PRIA for interoperability of the relevant standards
through mappings and XML transformations to enable applications to use
them both.

Mark has a long career in public service. He served as the Racine County
(WI) Register of Deeds from January 1994 until December 2004. During his
tenure, he was elected President of the Wisconsin Register of Deeds
Association (1999-2000) and served on the board of directors for the
National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks
(NACRC).  He also served as the Public Sector Co-Chair for the Property
Records Industry Association’s (PRIA) Technology Committee.

On January 15th, 2003 Mark rolled out Racine County’s Electronic
Recording System and recorded the first fully electronic real estate
documents in the state of Wisconsin.

I ask you to join with me in naming Mark to the LegalXML Steering
Committee.