Members of Wheatland Electric Cooperative, Inc., will receive ballots by mail in March to vote for trustees for the first time in cooperative history. 

Cooperative members who attended last year’s annual meeting on April 26, 2023, voted 320-287 to pass revisions to the cooperative’s bylaws, which included mail-in ballot voting for trustee elections. 

Prior to this year, elections were held in-person at our annual meeting locations through paper ballots distributed to members in attendance. 

Ballots will be mailed in late March and must be returned by April 19, 2024, at least five days prior to this year’s annual meeting. 

Our 2024 annual meeting will be held on April 24, 2024, in Great Bend, Kansas. The primary meeting in Great Bend will be livestreamed to seven additional remote meeting locations: Scott City, Leoti, Tribune, Syracuse, Garden City, Harper and Caldwell. 

Members across our service territory are encouraged to attend any of these meeting locations to hear cooperative news and updates, enjoy a meal, ask questions, enter for door prizes, and more.

WEC’s mail-in voting will be conducted and managed by Survey and Ballot Systems, a national data solutions company based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, as a trusted third-party provider. 

Members with questions about our mail-in voting process are encouraged to call their local WEC office or email us at memberservices@weci.net.

WEC is governed by a 10-member board of trustees elected by the cooperative’s membership. Board seats in the following districts are up for election this year:

• DISTRICT 3 (Greeley County in Kansas; Kiowa and Cheyenne counties in Colorado)

• DISTRICT 6 (Great Bend, Kansas)

• DISTRICT 7 (Harper, Kingman, Sumner and Sedgwick counties in Kansas)

See a full map of our service territory here. 

WEC’S BYLAWS ALLOW FOR TWO METHODS FOR TRUSTEE NOMINATIONS: 

• NOMINATION BY THE NOMINATING COMMITTEE
  The Board of Trustees appoints a nomination committee made up of one member from each of our seven districts. Members should contact WEC to get the contact information for their fellow member who represents their district on the nominating committee or contact Jim McVay, WEC’s general counsel, at 620-793-4223 or jmcvay@weci.net, BY FEB. 15 if they are interested in being nominated.

• NOMINATION BY A PETITION OF MEMBER 
  Twenty-five, or more, members of WEC can nominate any member as a trustee candidate. Nominations by petition must be sent to WEC BY MARCH 10. Members interested in running should contact Jim McVay, WEC’s general counsel, at 620-793-4223 or jmcvay@weci.net.