APA's Election

I'm writing to disagree strongly with the opinion of William Braden, M.D., who in the March 2 issue took issue with contested elections in APA and wrote that the past single-candidate system “worked about as well as the present one.”

As an APA member who in the early 1970s worked to promote choice of candidates via the Committee for Concerned Psychiatrists (CFCP), I submit that the single-candidate system was a total failure. It was a process that fostered a select “club” of APA officers, each of whom could tell us which year they would be APA president and who often acted in autocratic, rigid, and elitist ways, both internally with APA staff and the Board of Trustees, and with high-handed chairing of APA business meetings. The CFCP succeeded in nominating several candidates by petition (including three consecutive APA presidents), which soon led to the change in the APA Bylaws requiring a choice of candidates for all APA elected positions.

Some of Dr. Braden's points about needing ways to distinguish the capabilities and experience of candidates for voting members are valid, and APA should work on ways to improve this situation, but not by returning to a single-candidate system.