The Voting Groups feature is used to assign a voter to a group, then assign groups to certain questions on a ballot.
Voting groups are useful for any organization that has more than one membership category, like K-12 schools or universities. Voters will only see the questions they're allowed to vote on, so you can include all your questions on one ballot.
Once a vote begins, a voter's group cannot be changed. However, you can spoil the voter's ballot with the incorrect group, and re-add them to the voter list with the correct group.
Setting Up Voting Groups — An Example
Say you are running a vote for a Grade 9-12 high school student council. The council has four positions up for election:
Student Council President — all students vote on this position.
Student Council Grade 10 Representative — only grade 10 students vote on this position.
Student Council Grade 11 Representative — only grade 11 students vote on this position.
Student Council Grade 12 Representative — only grade 12 students vote on this position.
These can all be run on one ballot (i.e. as one vote) using voting groups. This would be set up as follows:
Proceed forward in your vote setup until you reach the "Voters" stage.
From the "Voter Options" available at the top of the page, choose "Voting Groups".
Scroll down to "Voter Information". Choose how you'd like to create your voter list in ElectionBuddy: by importing one from a previous election, by copying and pasting/typing one, or by importing one from a CSV file.
If you choose to import a voter list from a prior election or import a voter list from a CSV file, you can edit the voter lists once they are added.
The voter list table will contain a column called "Groups". This is where you assign your voters to groups. For the high school student council election, the students have been grouped as follows:
5. Scroll down to the "Group Settings" section. The names of each position on the ballot will be listed. Assign the voters' groups to each position, based on which positions the voters are allowed to vote on. For the high school student council election, the groups have been assigned to the ballot positions as follows:
Because all students are allowed to vote on "Student Council President", all groups have been assigned to that position.
Because only grade 10 students are allowed to vote on "Student Council Grade 10 Representative", only the "Grade 10" group has been assigned to that position.
Because only grade 11 students are allowed to vote on "Student Council Grade 11 Representative", only the "Grade 11" group has been assigned to that position.
Because only grade 12 students are allowed to vote on "Student Council Grade 12 Representative", only the "Grade 12" group has been assigned to that position.
Proceed to the "Review" page. Review and launch your vote.