After nearly two weeks of voting on the bids for the locations of the 2012/2013 IQA Regional Championships, the polls are finally locked and the results are in. But the process isn’t quite over yet.

Early on in the voting, it was decided that it would not be fair for a regional bid to win by a single vote when members’ votes were going to up to five different possible bids. Because of this, guidelines were put in place to guarantee that only bids receiving a large majority of the votes would be declared outright winners. A large majority was defined as either receiving more than 50% of all votes or receiving more than double the votes of any other bid. In all other cases, all bids tied for first and second after initial voting would be put in a runoff vote for the region’s captains that will take place over the next two days.

In the end, two regions finished with outright winners, while the other three will be put to runoffs. The Mid-Atlantic Regional and the Northeast Regional location announcements are pending agreement with the bids.

That leaves us with runoff votes in the Midwest, Southwest and West regions. Both the Midwest and West will have just two candidates for their runoffs, while a tie for second in the Southwest means three potential bids remain there. The runoffs, in alphabetical order, are:

Midwest Regional: Lawrence, KS; Warren County, OH
Southwest Regional: Austin, TX; College Station, TX; Denton, TX
West Regional: Placer Valley, CA; San Francisco, CA

Voting for the runoffs has already begun this morning with emails sent out to the captains of each of the three regions. The polls will close at 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday the 29th. If either the Midwest or West regional vote ends in a tie, the decision will be left to the respective regional staff. If the Southwest regional ends in a two-way tie, the third location will be eliminated and there will be a second runoff vote. If the Southwest regional vote ends in a three-way tie, it will also be left to the regional staff. In case you need a refresher on the bids, here are the full lists of bids for each of the three regions:

Midwest Regional Championships Bids
Southwest Regional Championships Bids
West Regional Championships Bids

We appreciate your votes and your continued patience as this process continues. Our goal is to ensure that we give you a regional in the location the majority of your region is happy with, and we found this to be the fairest solution. Good luck to the bids and happy voting to all!