NAPA membership is invited on an annual basis, with accepted members receiving full services through the calendar year for an annual membership fee.
Members are eligible to vote on any and all
NAPA bylaws
changes, and to elect officials to the seven-member board of directors. All voting is done by mail-in ballot, so that everyone may have their opinions counted, without the need to personally attend meetings (no proxy voting is allowed).
Each member receives one vote, plus additional votes based on the number of NAPA registered animals that they own at the time of the vote. For every 5 NAPA registered full-blood animals, and for every 10 Naturalean™ registered animals, the member receives 1 additional vote (capped to 20 additional votes). The maximum number of votes a member may have is 21. The philosophy behind this weighed vote is to correct the imbalance that exists between breeders with lower numbers of cattle and those with larger herds. In most breeds, there are significantly more breeders who have fewer than 100 animals than breeders with more than 100 head. The cattle industry norm is to see the smaller breeders come and go, while the larger breeders tend to remain in the business. (The average lifespan of a registered cattle breeder is some 7 years.) Therefore, a one-vote-per-member association voting policy will always favor the many smaller breeders over the few larger breeders. NAPA has endeavored to correct this by using the weighted vote policy. However, note that the NAPA membership is still comprised of a majority of small-scale breeders (less than 50 cattle), as are most breed associations.
NOTE: in the 25 year history of the NAPA breed association, the weighted-vote has never once been used to affect vote outcomes. All elections and bylaw amendments have been clearly decided by the basic one-member-one-vote format, meaning that all vote results were unanimous or nearly unanimous with no need to enact the weighted vote option.