ADELPHI, Md. — NABJ's executive board has declared John Yearwood the associations new treasurer after accepting the certified 2003 election results as final, NABJ President Herbert Lowe announced today.

Yearwood, the newly appointed world editor at The Miami Herald, defeated former NABJ Secretary Gregory Lee by four votes 262 to 258 according to the initial tally released after the election concluded Aug. 8 at the 28th annual convention in Dallas.

Lee, a deputy high school sports editor at The Washington Post, filed a formal request for a recount the next day.

As a result, the new NABJ board of directors deferred accepting the results as official until the independent company hired to conduct the election verified the tally, Lowe said.

This week, the executive board unanimously voted to add Yearwoods name and signature to NABJ's bank accounts.

NABJ is certain to benefit from Johns hard-fought election as he works these next two years to ensure that the memberships money is spent prudently and the association remains stable financially, the president said.

In the election, members also approved a proposal to reduce the size of the 19-member board of directors. However, three proposals that specified how to do so failed because none received the required two-thirds approval by the voting membership, according to new Parliamentarian Melanie Burney, an education reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

An amendment that would have required that two-thirds of a local affiliate chapters membership be NABJ members also failed because it did not garner a two-thirds vote, Burney said.

NABJ had been without a treasurer since Glenn Rice, a reporter at The Kansas City Star, resigned on July 7, about a month shy of completing his second two-year term.

In a letter to the NABJ Elections Committee, Lee, who served as secretary from 1999 through the convention, cited several discrepancies in the electoral process in seeking the recount. He said they included technical problems with computers and voting software, lack of coordination and confusion over membership deadlines.

NABJ's governing documents do not provide for a recount, Burney said. But to ensure an undisputed election, Lowe and executive board members directed Burney and Executive Director Tangie Newborn to investigate the matter as thoroughly and quickly as possible.

Neither Yearwood, who until recently was national and international editor at the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, nor Lee took part in the boards discussion about the election, Lowe said.

In its certified report to Newborn, Votenet Solutions, of Washington, D.C., which conducted the balloting, said it checked for database tampering, verified election vote counts and matched vote date and time stamps across each of its databases before certifying the results.

There were zero incorrectly filled out ballots and zero contestable ballots from this election, according to the report.

With that information, the executive board ratified the results.

Lee graciously accepted the outcome, Lowe said. He also readily agreed to continue serving as chairman of NABJ's SEED (Student Education Enrichment and Development) Committee, which among other things directs the annual convention student projects, the president said.

I submitted this action not for myself, but for the members of the association who felt they were disenfranchised from the process, said Lee, a past president of the New Orleans Association of Black Journalists. NABJ must move forward and I will continue to serve NABJ.

Both Lowe and Yearwood pledged to seek election and campaign reform.

Im happy that the election is finally over and I can now get to work on some of the promises I made during the campaign, such as ensuring that members get quarterly updates on NABJ's finances, said Yearwood, a past president of the Dallas/Forth Worth Association of Black Communicators. Greg Lee was a worthy opponent who clearly is very committed to NABJ. I'm glad that all of us will continue to benefit from his passion for the organization.