There are several ways to handle elections. Your By-Laws should spell them out clearly for you. Here are a few things I have used in the schools we are involved in:
1) PTO-- anyone who is a parent or teacher can vote- regardless of whether or not they attend meetings. the reason for this is because everyone is a member in a PTO. There are no dues and therefore each person who is involved at any capacity should be allowed to ahve a say so. Some people are very involved without attending meetings.
PTA- Only members with Paid up dues can vote.
2) Some schools only allow "active" members to vote and spell out what "active" means: maybe its people who have attended a % of meetings the past school year, or people who have been present at the past three meetings..different criteria fit different schools.
If you do not have By-Laws in place, then you could be in trouble because then it is up to your Executive Board to decide how elections will be handled. Principals can be really helpful when it comes to tough board members!

All our elections are done at the general meeting you really shouldnt be having a principal hand pick your officers. Do you have any bylaws that state any of this. Our principal has nothing to do with our elections except that she can place her vote. Other than that she can't do much.

Good Luck

Cindy

In our school the principal does not even have a vote as to who is an officer. Officers are picked by the parents. I think it is to safe-guard how the voting is done and to make sure it doesn't slant to just what the school wants.

Election should be done at a general meeting. Having a principal handpick officers or having only the executive board elect officers is a surefire way to be branded a clique.

If you're having a big event that same night, what a better opportunity to get lots of voters! Set up a table with two volunteers to serve as election officials and have people cast their ballots that night.

For the first time ever we have a very unusual problem. We have more than one person running for office. Do we vote at our executive meeting or at our general meeting which is a large event night? Our principal wants to hand pick the officers. Last year after both the executive and general votes were held and officers elected she tried to change officers. We really want to do what is right as a PTO.