Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) will offer absentee mail-in voting to qualifying members for the Annual Meeting to be held Wednesday, August 31, 2005.
To qualify for an absentee ballot, members must certify that one or more of the following situations exit: the member may: be absent from SMECO's service area; be unable to attend the Annual Meeting due to age, accident, or disability; or be attending to a death or serious illness in the family.
Applications for absentee mail-in voting may be obtained from any SMECO office, from the Co-op's Web site at http://www.smeco.coop, or by calling SMECO's Public Affairs Division at 301-274-4480. Completed, signed applications must be returned by August 15, 2005. Qualifying applicants will receive their ballot packets and voting instructions in the mail. Once a ballot is completed, it must be returned to the Annual Meeting Credentials and Election (C & E) Committee no later than August 30, 2005, in the pre-printed envelope provided in the packet. The C & E Committee will be responsible for processing all absentee ballots.
Absentee ballots will count toward a quorum and are handled in accordance with SMECO's bylaws, which require the Cooperative to hold a meeting annually.
An annual meeting notice, as well as information about candidates for SMECO's Board of Directors, will be mailed to members starting in mid-July.
For more information, or to obtain a copy of SMECO's bylaws, please contact the Co-op at 1-888-440-3311.
SMECO is a customer-owned electric cooperative providing electricity to over 135,000 services in southern Prince George's County, and in Charles County, St. Mary's County, and all but the northeast portion of Calvert County. Co-ops are distinctly different from investor-owned utilities because co-ops are owned by their customers, and these members vote for men and women who sit on the Board of Directors. SMECO is one of over 600 Touchstone Energy Co-ops.