Silver Spring, Maryland, United States
Elizabeth Lechleitner/ANN

For many Seventh-day Adventists who make the trek to General Conference Session every five years,

it's a long-anticipated chance to celebrate the church's culture and values on a global scale. But for

thousands of delegates, it's also a voting marathon.

This summer in Atlanta, Georgia, those delegates will consider upcoming agenda items during the

11-day international business meeting, including the election of top church leadership.

They'll accept reports from world church leaders and the church's 13 world regions, approve

new church administrative bodies, elect officers and departmental directors, propose amendments

to the church's constitution, bylaws and manual and consider any number of miscellaneous items

added to session agenda by the church's Executive Committee.

While all 2,410 delegates vote on Session agenda items, only a select number actually nominate

church officers.

During their first day in Atlanta, delegates from each of the church's 13 regions will meet and

appoint a prescribed number of their members -- typically around 235 total -- to the Nominating

Committee, according to guidelines set by the church's Working Policy.

Delegates vote at the General Conference Session in St. Louise, Missouri in 2005. [ANN file photo] 

Those selected as Nominating Committee members

then convene to recommend candidates for various

offices and departments at world church

headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Any candidate the Nominating Committee chooses

is immediately presented to the full body of delegates,

where a majority vote determines if the nominee is

elected. If he or she isn't, the Nominating

Committee reconvenes to recommend someone else.

The church's highest positions -- those of world

church president, secretary and treasurer -- are

the first nominations. Presidents of the church's world regions are nominated next, the Working Policy

states.

While Nominating Committee members are free to recommend reelection for incumbents, they

can also suggest another candidate. While the process is less straightforward than say, national

elections, church leaders said it's designed to discourage campaigning in the run-up to Session

by narrowing the time between nomination and voting.

The church's Constitution doesn't specifically dictate delegate make-up, but it's "expected and

assumed" that delegates include both genders, as well as a broad range of age groups and nationalities,

said Larry Evans, world church undersecretary.

The 300 members of the church's Executive Committee, which include representatives from each

of its 13 regions, are automatically considered Session delegates. The remaining 2,000 and some

delegates are selected proportionally as outlined in the church's Constitution. Consideration is given

to factors such as church membership and the number and size of administrative entities and

regional institutions in a given church region. Minimum quotas are also in place to ensure that

laypeople and other non-administrative employees are among the delegates.

While it's impossible to eliminate what he calls the "human element" of the nomination and

voting process, Lowell Cooper, a world church vice president, said the process is not skewed

toward self-advancement.

"It's not so much the person looking for the job, so much as the job looking for the person,"

making the notion of campaigning immaterial, Cooper said.

Even if a potential nominee were to try to influence votes in his or her favor, Evans said it's nearly

impossible to determine a delegate's vote on all issues, given the volume of agenda items considered

during Session.

"Because so many things are voted on at Session, there is no feasible way of predicting each vote,

or stuffing the vote," Evans said.

Delegates are given a prepared agenda of voting items, called recommendations, at session. These

items are approved ahead of time by the church's Executive Committee, a process outlined in the

church's Constitution and designed to give church leaders time to study the implications of any

given item well before it's voted on, Evans said. While individual delegates can still "technically"

add or subtract agenda items, such new proposals are generally referred to a steering committee

for future consideration, he said.

"Since each change takes a substantial amount of consideration before it's voted on, it's not likely

the agenda will change at Session itself," he said.