Sections in this category

The Election Cycle

Elections can be used for Committees, boards, awards or any other situation in which you need to collect nominations and/or votes for something. There many pieces to the election functionality and not all of them will be applicable to every election situation. This article and the videos below will cover available steps in the election cycle.

Set up the Election Record

The Election record is the primary record and will allow you to set nomination deadlines and guidelines as well as voting deadlines and structure. For full details on the fields on the election record click here.

Set up Election Requirements

As part of the nomination process, if the person doing the nominating needs to complete certain requirements for themselves and/or their nominees you can create an election requirement to confirm this is done. Requirements could be things like submitting documentation, or the nominator must meet specific criteria. The requirements can be completed manually or by query. If you plan to accept nominations without any additional review then you do not need to set up Election Requirements. For Election Requirement details click here.

Collect/Enter Nomination Records

Nominations are optional records that collect information about the contact submitting the nomination and the contacts that are nominated. The Nomination record can also collect documentation and link to Election Requirements. For Nomination record details click here.  

If the election nominations are available on the portal then people can enter nominations based on the deadlines and criteria set up on your Election record. The portal process will create nomination records. If there are requirements, those will be related to the Nomination records for staff to review.

If the election nominations are not available on the portal, staff can decide if they want to enter nomination records to track all nominees, or they may decide to skip nominations records and directly create Candidate records.

Create Candidate Records

Candidate records are the people being voted for. They can come from the Nomination records or be directly entered by staff without a Nomination record. Regardless of where the names come from, the Candidate records are not generated automatically by default. Staff will determine who the candidates are and create the records for the voting window. For Candidate record details click here.

If you are only using the election to generate nominations and everyone nominated is accepted, into a committee, for example you can skip the candidate record step and the voting step and go add your nominee contacts directly to the committee. The Candidate records are only required if you plan on using the voting functionality.

Collect Votes

Votes can be collected on the portal. Deadlines, query for who can vote, voting scales, and voting forms are all connected to the election record. When the voting window starts those eligible to vote can review candidate information on the portal and make their choices. This will generate vote records that can be reviewed by staff to determine results. For Vote record details click here.

If the election is not available on the portal staff can manually enter Vote records to collect the data and then use advanced find to export results for review and verification.