The Sustainable Foundation Advisory Group (SFAG) has today confirmed a second peer review process of eligible voting members will commence on Sunday, June 24 for seven days. The review will offer a final opportunity for the USA cricket community to analyze the complete list of individuals, clubs and leagues that are eligible to vote ahead of the planned USA Cricket Board elections.

The SFAG has been encouraged by the thousands of registrations received from the community under the inclusive membership model it has developed. This unprecedented response combined with our commitment to a robust and transparent election process means we have added an additional stage before the elections to ensure we have certainty around the integrity of the final list of eligible voting members.

The process of building a national governing body with an individual membership base from scratch has not been an easy task, but the current process will give cricket in the USA a strong foundation from which to build and grow by providing everyone with a voice in the governance of their national federation.

Undertaking a second peer review will mean a short delay in the elections taking place, but for the long term health of the sport in the USA it is a vital pause which enables us to start the elections with complete conviction in the validity of the membership. It is also important to the SFAG that we are open and transparent at every stage and as the first review threw up a number of changes, we want the community to be able to review that and confirm the final list of eligible voters.

A comprehensive audit of the initial peer review of the draft list of eligible voters published on May 4 has been undertaken to review, double-check and ensure the integrity of all of the membership and eligibility data. In that exercise, the SFAG has been supported by the ICC Americas’ Project USA staff, the database software company, the election software company and the independent election auditors.

Based upon the information provided and analyses of same, the SFAG is now confident that the revised list is a true and accurate record of every individual, club and league that is eligible to vote, however, in the interests of transparency and the overarching objective of uniting the USA cricket community, the SFAG have proposed a second round of peer review is undertaken. This provides the community with a final opportunity to ensure that all those eligible to vote are able to do so.

The main issues that were reported and have subsequently been addressed during the data clean- up and the first peer review process are set out below together with an explanation of how each of them have been dealt with in order to arrive at the proposed final list of eligible voters:

• Duplicate entries: Considerable numbers of duplicate entries were removed where individuals had registered on more than one occasion or with different/similar names.
•  Multiple alignment with ‘primary clubs’: Individuals who had inadvertently aligned with more than one ‘primary club’ on registration were given various opportunities to state which of those clubs was their actual ‘primary club’. All further instructions were applied and, in cases where no further instructions were received, the SFAG applied a series of principles that were designed to ensure that those individuals were only counted once. All individuals in this situation have been given the opportunity to verify or change their ‘primary club’.
• Failures to meet the constitutional criteria within time: Unless there were exceptional circumstances brought to our attention, the SFAG agreed to follow the strict deadlines published and definitions within the constitution, i.e. namely that:
• ▪ where an individual, club or league was not fully registered within the deadline, no extension of time would be given and those members would not be deemed eligible to vote on this occasion.
• ▪ where a club did not have twelve individual members successfully registered within the deadline, no extension of time would be given to find or register others and those clubs would not be deemed eligible to vote on this occasion.
• ▪ where a league did not have three clubs successfully registered within the deadline, no extension of time would be given to find or register others and those leagues would not be deemed eligible to vote on this occasion.
• Inadvertent omission and inclusion of certain groups of individuals on the preliminary list: Because of the manner in which the preliminary reports of individual members pulled data from the database, the preliminary list of eligible voters published on 4 May contained some individuals who were not actually entitled to vote (e.g. because they had not in fact registered by the deadline) and did not include some individual members who were entitled to vote. Following communication with all those affected, those errors have now been fully rectified in the final proposed list.
• Identification of a number of suspected illegitimate memberships: Following the initial peer review process and scrutiny of all of the membership records, a number of individual memberships were identified which, for various reasons, appeared to be illegitimate. A process, supported by the independent auditor was rolled out to attempt to verify these records and as a result a number of individual memberships were de-activated.

The independent election auditor, Biggs Kofford (CPA), has worked closely with the project team throughout and has reviewed the revised list of eligible voters along with the steps taken to produce that list. As part of the audit process it has:

• reviewed and verified (as fair, appropriate and correctly applied) the methods of cleansing all of the membership data captured by the membership registration;
• reviewed all responses/queries received as part of the peer review process and verified that all responses/queries to the peer review have been addressed and
  dealt with in accordance with the principles approved by the SFAG; carried out statistically valid testing measures to prevent the inclusion of duplicate
  voters; and
• carried out statistically valid sampling of Individual, Club and League members to verify that: (i) all members who meet the relevant criteria are contained on the relevant list of eligible voters; and (ii) members who do not meet the relevant criteria are not contained on the relevant list of eligible voters.

The revised lists will be published on USA Cricket’s website and can be found at the following links (Clubs and Leagues, Individuals, and International Players). These reports show a total composition of 5,469 Individual Members (including International Players), 168 Clubs and 24 Leagues all eligible
to vote, which the SFAG regards as a phenomenal success.

The SFAG once again encourages all members to review the documents and report any final issues or concerns about their accuracy or completeness by email to [email protected] by no later than Sunday, July 1 at 11:59p PT. As before, all issues raised will be dealt with fairly and consistently under the oversight of the SFAG.

Once complete, we will call upon all eligible voters to exercise their right to vote in a historic election to determine the leaders who will carry USA Cricket forward. While the details of the revised election timeline will be announced separately, we do not expect the elections to start earlier than July 9.

Thank you for your continued patience and commitment to the future of USA Cricket.

Yours sincerely,

The SFAG – Dr. Vince Adams, Donna Bowes, Jim Isch, Jagan Jagannathan, Priyantha Liyanage, Shiraz Najam, Syed Shahanawaz, Patricia Whittaker