zation. Lastly, some client organizations may have a small number of electors who exist outside of their single sign-on ecosystem and do not have access to it. To ensure such electors are not disenfranchised, users can still selectively send out email blasts with Direct Voting Links configured by the Voting System, to allow these electors to bypass integrated Remote Authentication methods. Remote Authentication for Election Manager Users This configuration is only available with Remote Authentication over SAML or CAS . In addition to configuring Remote Authentication for electors, the Voting System can also be configured to allow Election Manager users to log into the Election Manager tool with their known organizational login credentials. This implementation does require Simply Voting staff involvement for implementation. Please contact support to make your request. Additional Information and Tips Ensure Voting Website Instructions Are Appropriate After Remote Authentication has been successfully set up, remember to

If your election contained at least one comment box question, any collected comments will be available from the Results section. Voter comments by default are anonymous and divorced from other questions. To review comments, View your election and to navigate to the Results section. Then, click on the 🠗 Comments CSV button at the bottom of the page. You may organize or sort the comments data in a common spreadsheet software.

Users may have varied reasons for why an election needs to be started or ended early. For instance, you may want to start an election early so electors do not have to wait until the previously specified date and time to cast their vote, or you may want to end an election early if you have reached a specific amount of voter turnout. To start or end an election early, use the View button for the election you wish to manage from the Elections page. This will bring you to the Election Overview section. If the election has not yet started, next to the Start Date you will see a Start Now button. If the election has already started, next to the End Date you will see an End Now button. When either starting or ending an election early, a Confirmation Box will pop-up asking if you are

Checking Reports To keep tabs on your total elector turnout, navigate to the Reports section. At the top of the page, from this report you can see the cumulative turnout of electors, the number of electors per day, in addition to a customizable Turnout Chart . Spikes in turnout often correspond to an email blast. Additionally, by hovering over any given turnout bar, you can find more specific information about that particular bar. At the bottom of the page, you will find the downloadable reports . By default a Turnout by Country report is available. Other reports may also be available, depending on any additional premium or enhanced features enabled. Reviewing Individual Turnout from the Electors List To keep tabs on whether individual electors have voted, navigate to the Electors section. You can then use the Find An Elector search field to determine whether an individual elector has or has not

they are redirected back to the Voting System upon successful authentication. Passwords are not seen by the Voting System. Implementation of this authentication method does not require Simply Voting staff involvement, and can be configured self-service by client organizations inside the Election Manager tool by navigating to the Settings page and then to the Authentication Details section. Requirements Server Hostname (e.g. www.example.com ) Server Base URI (e.g. /cas ) Server Port (usually 443 ) CAS Logout can also be optionally configured to logout the elector from CAS upon logout from the Voting System. Election Manager users can also be authenticated via CAS. See here for more information. HTTP(S) Authentication The Voting System can authenticate against a URL protected by the HTTP Basic Authentication schema. Electors enter their credentials on the Voting Website, which are passed along to your system. Upon successful authentication, the elector is logged

Once you have finished managing your entire set of Questions and Options , navigate back to the Questions section and review your election by clicking on the Proof the Ballot button. Proofing will give you a sense of how an election will look and how electors can interact with it from your Voting Website . This includes reviewing segmentation restrictions which affect ballot styles , so you can check that your questions are segmented the way you wish. Information regarding how questions are segmented will not appear on the real elector facing ballot, unless you manually specify this information using variable codes as described earlier. Additionally, you must cast at least one proof vote in order to later Finalize the election. Click the Copy Link button to copy the unique proof link for your election. You may share this proof link with other associates or colleagues via email. These other evaluators can

In the Electors section, you can start adding eligible electors. Electors are all eligible voters that can participate and vote in your election. You can begin by adding electors Manually one by one, or you can Import electors in-full by setting up and formatting a .CSV file with your elector data in it, which will save you time and energy. What to Use as Elector Data The most common data needed to run any election are Elector IDs , elector Names , and elector Email Addresses . These datasets are provided by your organization. Finally, an additional secret, known as a Password is also typically the last element to an elector's record of data. Passwords by default are auto-generated by the Voting System and not known by any user. Additional data may be needed if you have opted for Premium Features . This may include categories of elector membership, vote

Once you have completed your election review, if you haven't already you may optionally proceed to the Settings page and the Voting Website section to further customize your Voting Website ’s color scheme, logo, and descriptive instructions text. Remember, these items are account wide and apply to all elections. Once finished, preview the look and feel of your Voting Website 's login page, as well as any additional text you've adjusted in the Voting Website section, by clicking on the URL for your account's Voting Website in the Organization Details section.

Can I make changes to an already finalized or active election? To protect the election's integrity, once Finalized , users cannot edit or change the ballot. If you find a mistake or need to alter the ballot after it has been finalized, you may still make those changes under specific circumstances, by un-finalizing the election. If no votes have been cast yet If no votes have been cast yet, whether the election is in Waiting mode or already Active , you may un-finalize it from the Finalize page by clicking on the Un-Finalize button and confirming. Once un-finalized, the election will return to Draft mode. Any email blasts that have not already been sent will be put on hold as long as the election remains in Draft mode. Once changes are applied, remember to Finalize the election again. If the original start time has passed, you

Premium Feature Add-on Weighted voting is a Premium Feature add-on. If you are interested in additional information or pricing, please contact support . “One size fits all” is rarely true when it comes to online elections. Election organizers sometimes need to enhance their basic election with more advanced features like weighted voting . Table of Contents Managing Electors with Weighted Voting Additional Information about Weighted Voting Checking and Interpreting Weighted Results Weighted voting is a terrific tool which allows you to accommodate shareholder elections or similar situations by specifying the “number of shares” or “vote weight” for each eligible elector. Election results take the weight of each vote into account and tallies the total vote weights exercised. Setting up an online election with weighted voting is quite like setting up a basic election, as covered in our Election Manager Guide . This Weighted Voting Guide will walk you through the

What ranked choice voting methods does the Voting System support? Below are the preferential or ranked choice counting methods currently supported by the Voting System. With preferential voting, voters rank voting options in order of preference, from their first preference to their last preference. The counting method selected will determine how those preferences are converted in election results. Single Transferable Vote / Instant Runoff Voting / Alternative Voting Simply Voting supports several variations of Single Transferable Vote (STV) . We offer different options for the quota used in calculating the threshold for determining winners, as well as variations of the counting methods for tabulation. The different options are described below. Quotas With STV, quotas are determined before tabulation begins. These quotas are used by the voting system to determine when winners are elected. Once the prescribed number of winners are elected, tabulation stops. Option 1 - Droop quota (default) Our default configured quota

After you’ve created your election, in the Electors section you can start adding eligible electors either manually one by one, or you can import electors in full by setting up and formatting a .CSV file with your elector data in it. When elector segmentation is enabled, you may specify segments for each elector. Typical Uses of Segmentation Users typically need to segment electors because various groups of electors receive unique and dynamic ballots based on their segmentation categorization. For instance, an organization may have organization-wide positions like President , Vice President , and Secretary that are voted upon by all eligible electors. An organization, however, also may have other representatives that are unique to electors in a specific geographic region or of a specific membership type, such as Midwest Representative or Associate Member Representative . Thus electors who are segmented as Midwest or as Associate may have one or more

Results are immediately available for view and download upon the end of an election. To review results, View your election and navigate to the Results section. In this above example, the last question was open to all electors regardless of segmentation. The other questions were restricted to certain electors -- "Retired" and "Student" segments respectively. To download your results in a .CSV file to further organize or sort the results data in a common spreadsheet software, click on the 🠗 Raw Results CSV button. Each row in the file is a voter. To download a certified results .PDF file with the entire summary of your results as it appears on the Results page, click the 🠗 Certified Results PDF button. To give your Electors access to the Results , you can Publish election results to your Voting Website . You can always Unpublish election results at any time. Further segmentation of results may also

How do I change where email blast replies go to? Electors may from time to time reply to email blasts when they have a question regarding your election, or have encountered an issue with voting. Any such replies are sent to your reply-to address , which is indicated on the Email Blast page below the From field. By default, the reply-to address is your account's Public Email Address , which is publicly visible on your voting website's How It Works page. Changing the Public Email Address To change your account's Public Email Address , head over to Settings in the Election Manager . In the navigation menu, select Voting Website . Update the address in the Public Email Address field, then click Save at the bottom of the page. Changes to the reply-to address are not retroactive . Replies to email blasts already sent will continue to be directed

From time to time, the list of eligible electors for any given election may need to be updated. New electors may have recently joined the organization, or perhaps were mistakenly left off the original list, or perhaps the original list has electors who are no longer eligible to vote and are in need of removal, or perhaps there are simply inaccuracies when it comes to elector data. To address these situations, election organizers have the ability to make a few adjustments after Finalization of an election. These include: Adding electors manually one by one. Deleting electors manually as long as they have not yet voted. Editing elector information , such as updating email addresses or names. If you need to import a larger number of electors , please contact support . Adding Electors Navigate to the Electors section. To add an elector , click on the New Elector button. In the pop-up

How do I log into the Election Manager tool? To log into the Election Manager, simply navigate to Simply Voting's homepage and click Login in the upper right corner. Once you've reached the Election Manager's login page , provide your Voting Website in the input field and click the Login button. Provide your Username and your Password and click the Login button. You can also bookmark this URL with your Voting Website already filled out if you would like to quickly return to it in the future as well. Logging in with Two-Factor Authentication Enabled If your account has two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled, an additional step requiring you to enter a 6-digit verification code from the previously configured TOTP app on your mobile device will also be required. If desired, you can have Simply Voting trust and remember the device you are logging into

After you have created an election, on the Elections page, click on the View button to begin management. Use the navigation panel to navigate from the Election Overview to the Election Details section. In the Election Details section, you can edit the election’s Name , Starting Date and Time , End Date and Time , as well as the optional Description describing the election. One or more placeholders may be available for use in the Description to further personalize any given elector's ballot. To use a placeholder , simply start typing two open curly brackets (e.g. {{ ) to open a dynamic auto-complete menu of available placeholders depending on the features activated on your account and relevant to this specific field. You may also optionally specify a Usergroup .

Creating a Question In the Questions section you define the items or issues being voted upon. Questions represent individual topics on which your electors will vote. Click the Create New Question button to start the creation process. Create a Title for your first question describing the topic ( e.g. “Board of Trustees” ) and then click the Create button. After you’ve created a new question, click on the Edit button to manage the question's details. In the Question Details section you now edit the Title , specify a Description (Optional) , and upload an Image (Optional) . In the Description you can use formatting to add emphasis, and use placeholders to further personalize an elector's ballot. To use a placeholder , simply start typing two open curly brackets (e.g. {{ ) to open a dynamic auto-complete menu of available placeholders depending on the features activated on your account and relevant to

Log in to your Simply Voting account by navigating to Simply Voting’s homepage and clicking “Login” in the upper right corner. The first page you will see is the Election Manager’s “Elections” page. From this initial page you will start building your election. An Election represents a voting event. All elections begin in Draft status, and while in Draft status your election is fully editable. Your election cannot be voted in until you change the status from Draft , as discussed further on in this Guide. You may also have multiple simultaneous or overlapping elections, serving multiple voting events. To start creating your election, click on the blue Create New Election button. If no elections are on your account, your Elections page will look like this: If elections are on your account, your Elections page will look like this: In the pop-up window that appears, enter a