Saturday 10 January 2015

Vote for the 2015 Branch Pub of the Year (Poty) & Club of the Year (CotY) awards.

In the next few days all branch members of Sunderland & South Tyneside CAMRA will be receiving notification by either email (if we have your email address) or by letter (If we don’t.)

This communication gives notice that between now (Jan 6th) & Feb 14th (Midnight) we want your vote for the 2015 Branch Pub of the Year (Poty) & Club of the Year (CotY) awards. 

It’s very important to us that you take part in the vote as the more branch members that do take part then the more meaningful the result is to us as the award giver, but also to the Pub & Club gaining the award.
(In previous years this vote has had a high turnout. In fact we are proud to say one of the highest turnouts of any CAMRA branch nationally. Something we should be proud of yet still strive to improve! )

This year is also a first, as we move from a paper ballot to an online one. 
We do this simply because of the rising cost to branch funds of continuing a paper scheme.

In order to vote please follow the link provided below. 
You will need to logon. To do this you need to know your CAMRA membership number & also your national CAMRA password. 
This is the same CAMRA membership number & password you use to log onto any CAMRA website such as “WhatPub” or the “Membership Area” part of the national CAMRA website. If you have never used this before the default password will be the post code of the address you used to first join CAMRA. {The default password may include your door number as either a prefix or suffix to the postcode, this is if another CAMRA member lives on the same street’}
If all this fails go to http://password.camra.org.uk/ else email webaccess@camra.org.uk to get your password reset.

Once you have these details go to the voting site at: http://www.evp.sst.camra.org.uk/

You must vote for at least one pub, but if possible consider voting for your three favourite pubs & three favourite clubs.
The ballot lists the 22 eligible pubs. These are the 22 pubs in our branch area that your beer scoring on "WhatPub” put into the 2015 CAMRA Good Beer Guide.
The 6 clubs listed are the only 6 Clubs in the branch area that we currently know serve cask ale.

After selecting between 1 & 6 entries the system will list them for your confirmation. 
If you confirm the selection will be complete & your vote cast, you won’t be able to log back on to the system this year. 
If you do not confirm then your choice will be disregarded & you need to log back on & vote again.

Once your vote is cast your CAMRA membership number will not be stored with your votes thus your vote will be anonymous. CAMRA membership numbers are retained, but only for audit purposes & to ensure one member one vote.

For this year only: Those branch members for whom we don’t yet hold a valid email address will also receive a paper ballot slip with their written notification letter. They should use this ONLY if they do not have access to the online voting site. 

However in order to audit these paper votes against online votes these paper slips must contain your valid CAMRA membership number, so paper votes will not be anonymous. We very much recommend therefore that the online site is used for your vote.

If you have joint CAMRA membership can you please make sure your joint members have also seen this notification. All joint members have a unique CAMRA membership number & thus are enfranchised to take part in this ballot.


Should you have any problems or queries either with the online vote system or this notification please contact the adjudication officer on evote@sst.camra.org.uk