The American Homebrewers Association is holding their Governing Committee Elections and Washington has Tom Schmidlin up for re-election. Tom was one of the founders of the Washington Homebrewers Association, a Golden Mash Paddle recipient, the 2012 National Homebrewers Conference co-organizer, and an incredible advocate for homebrewing in Washington.

You can read all about Tom's background and stances here:

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/membership/aha-governing-committee/election/tom-schmidlin/

Tom also writes:

"I'm the chair of the competition subcommittee - that committee came up with the rule and registration changes for this year's competition, love them or hate them. We based the direction of the changes on the survey we sent out to members, who indicated that they favored inclusiveness for the competition. To that end, we were able to increase the number of members participating by 63%. We were also able to increase the number of overall entries by adding a judging center. We've also added 1st round volunteer incentives in the form of a random free conference ticket and first dibs on entries for volunteers. We are hoping that by increasing the number of volunteers at first round sites we will be able to increase the number of entries judged at each site in the future, which will help alleviate the growth issues. As of last count we've been able to accommodate 93% of those who wanted to enter."

This year there are 25 people running for 8 seats and we need Washington AHA Members to help ensure Washington is represented on the Governing Committee. Please take a second and cast your vote for Tom.

Members can find out more about voting and cast your vote at:

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/membership/aha-governing-committee/election/

Voting is open until March 31st. (You do not need to use all 8 of your votes). Thanks for taking the time to support Washington homebrewing.