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Voting & Elections

Online ballots for board elections, bylaw amendments and member surveys. You can limit a ballot to certain membership tiers — for example, only full members vote on bylaw changes.

What you can do

  • Run any number of ballots — elections, referendums, surveys.
  • Ask single-choice, multiple-choice or yes/no questions, several to a ballot.
  • Set a voting period, or leave the dates blank and open and close voting by hand.
  • Let every active member vote, or only members in the tiers you pick.
  • One vote per member per ballot, enforced by the system. A vote can't be changed once it's submitted.
  • Offer an "Abstain" choice on every question.
  • Choose who sees the results, and when.

How to create a ballot

Meetings & Board → Ballots → Create New Ballot.

  • Title — what's being voted on.
  • Description — context for voters.
  • Ballot Type — Election, Referendum or Survey. It's a label members see on the ballot.
  • Who Can Vote — All Active Members, or Specific Membership Tiers (tick the tiers).
  • Voting Period — start and end date and time. Both are optional.
  • Allow Abstain — adds an Abstain choice to every question.
  • Results Visibility — After Voting Closes, Visible During Voting, or Admin Only.

Then add questions with Add Question. For each one, the question text, its type (single choice, multiple choice with a maximum number of selections, or yes/no) and its choices. A board election usually has one question per office.

Counting is plurality — the choice with the most votes wins. Ranked-choice isn't available.

Save. A new ballot is a draft; members can't see it yet.

How to open and close voting

On the Ballots list, click Open Voting on the ballot. Members can vote from then until the end of the voting period. If you set a start date in the future, the ballot appears when that date arrives.

When the end date passes, the ballot closes by itself. To close it early, or to close a ballot with no end date, click Close Voting.

How members vote

Members vote on a Voting page. If you don't have one, the Ballots screen says so and offers Create the Voting page, which makes it and offers to add it to your menu. To make it by hand: Website → Pages → Add New Page, set Page Type to Voting, publish.

Members sign in and go to that page. Under Open Ballots they see each ballot they're eligible for, with its closing time, and vote with Submit Vote. Ballots they're not eligible for don't appear. Lapsed and expired members, and visitors who aren't signed in, can't vote.

Under Past Ballots they see the 20 most recently closed ballots and, unless a ballot's results are Admin Only, its results.

Who sees the results

  • After Voting Closes — results appear under Past Ballots once the ballot closes.
  • Visible During Voting — a member sees the running totals after casting their vote, marked as still in progress.
  • Admin Only — members never see the results; admins do.

Admins see full results any time from the Results link on the Ballots list: eligible voters, votes cast, participation rate, and a bar chart for each question. Export Results (CSV) downloads the totals for your minutes.

Votes are not secret

SocietyPress records which member cast each vote. Members never see who voted for what, but anyone with access to the database could. If your bylaws require a secret ballot, keep using paper for that vote for now. Secret ballots are on the roadmap.

If something looks wrong

A member says they should be able to vote but the ballot isn't on their page. Check their membership is active and their tier is one the ballot allows. Ballots a member isn't eligible for don't show at all.

Results don't add up to the number of voters. On a multiple-choice question one voter can pick several options. On single-choice and yes/no questions, abstentions are counted separately.

A ballot isn't showing on the Voting page. Check it's been opened on the Ballots list, and that its start date has arrived.