Pacifica Announces New Election Chief for Next Listener Poll

BERKELEY (May 31) -- Pacifica Radio today announced the appointment of electoral reform specialist Kenny Mostern as the network's National Elections Supervisor for Pacifica's next round of local station board membership elections.

Mostern is presently a campaign consultant specializing in electoral reform initiatives. Most recently, he led the Measure I ballot initiative in Berkeley, California. The successful March 2004 ballot initiative called for the city to adopt the Instant Voting Runoff method, which ranks candidates in order of preference, to be adopted in local elections. See www.fairvote.org/irv/whatis2.htm

Mostern's appointment follows the successful completion of the first ever Pacifica membership elections that produced five listener- and staff-elected Local Station Boards each at the network's five stations. More than 16,000 Pacifica members nationwide voted last January for some 320 candidates running for the 120 local seats. The local station boards in turn appointed members to a 22 member Pacifica National Board.

In elections to be held this fall, half of all existing Local Station Board seats will be contested. Nominations for vacating seats will open on July 25 and close on September 25. Ballots will be mailed on October 15 and are due to be returned by November 15. The new national board will be seated in January 2005.

The National Elections Supervisor oversees and certifies the fairness of the elections in each station area. The national elections supervisor also oversees the nominations process, the preparation of the ballots and the counting of the ballots and reports on the results of every election on the network's websites.

New elections supervisor Kenny Mostern works closely with the Washington, DC-based Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD), as well as with Californians for Electoral Reform. He worked on Measure A Alameda County Health Care Tax (March 2004), Oakland Violence Prevention Initiative (March 2004), the Peter Camejo for Governor of California campaign (November 2002), and Yes on Oakland Measure EE (Just Cause Eviction/Renter's Rights) (November 2002)

Prior to becoming a Campaign Consultant, he spent two years as Executive Director of the National Poetry Association, and five years as a faculty member at the University of Tennessee. He holds a Ph.D. in African American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley

Kenny can be reached at

The Pacifica National Elections Supervisor post is a part-time consultancy. The complete job description can be found at: pacifica.org/news/electioncoordinator.html

The Pacifica Radio network owns and operates five non-commercial radio stations: WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City (www.wbai.org) KPFA 94.1FM in Berkeley, California, (www.kpfa.org) KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles (www.kpfk.org) WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC, (www.wpfw.org) and KPFT 90.1FM (www.kpft.org) in Houston.