MS volunteers ensure integrity of Southern Baptist Convention voting process

Tony Martin
Editor

David Haynes, pastor of First Church, Senatobia, and his wife, April, were tapped to serve as tellers during the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas June 10 – 11.

The Haynes didn’t see this coming. 

“We didn’t want to do this,” Hayes said. “I received an email from Don Currence [Registration Secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention], and he basically said ‘David Haynes, you’ve been nominated to serve on the Teller Committee. Would you be willing to do that?’ And I responded yes.”

The convention had 14,000 pre-registered messengers. Over 10,000 actually attended. More than 18,000 people gathered, representing 250-plus exhibitors and nearly 4,000 churches from every state — even the farthest reaches of Alaska and Hawaii. 

Because of the numbers, the Convention opened tellers’ positions to spouses of the current tellers.

“I asked April if she wanted to serve, and she did,” Haynes said. “There were probably 45 or 50 tellers in the room.

“The training, led by Don, was really kind of neat,” he continued. “They told us what’s not accepted and what votes cannot be. A person can do a write in if they want to.”

“You have to count on your own,” April said. “You couldn’t count with your spouse or anybody you were kin to. We sat at little tables, with two to a table. They divide ballots at each table into two big stacks, and then you tally up. Then you swap stacks and count each other’s. If they’re right, then they’re bound with a little official slip on top, and then you watch the guy put them in the computer and confirm that it’s right.”

“You watch him and confirm and log everything,” Haynes said. “You can’t walk away until you see that he tallied what you counted correctly in an Excel spreadsheet database.”

“No one can leave the room until everybody is done counting and everything’s in the computer,” April said. 

“The doors are shut, and you can’t leave,” Haynes continued. “Once that vote is tallied, then they open the doors. You can go to the restroom, you can get water, you can go talk outside or whatever. But as soon as everything starts, they gather us all together, they shut the doors, and nobody leaves until ever ballot is tallied.”

“They were real firm on that,” April said. “We weren’t supposed to tell anybody what we had until it was made public knowledge. We weren’t supposed to be texting or telling anybody the results yet.”

All the Haynes learned through this experience helped them affirm the integrity of the business process.

“Why don’t we allow an app?” Haynes asked rhetorically. “Why don’t we let messengers uses some type of technology to do this? We learned that every time we have a balloted count, instead of electronic means, we save the convention $100,000. For every 5000 messengers that would vote by a cell phone, it requires a cell tower to be close by. That would cost fifty grand. If you have 10,000 messengers, it would take two towers. That’s $50,000 apiece. As Don said, we want to be good stewards of our CP funds.”

“We want to serve Jesus in every way we can,” April said. “Mississippi Baptists have been very good to us, and we want to be good to them in return.”

“We found out that those in the room serving at the SBC level are people just like us,” Haynes stated. “They pastor churches just like us. They serve people just like us. They just happen to be in different states.”