Your first vote during a MeetingVote should be a registration or test motion.
This can be held days leading up to your vote or may open as attendees arrive at your live or virtual meeting. This process establishes a quorum as well as identifies the members that will participate in the meeting. This also gives the administrator time to address any voter issues, such as not receiving their voting credentials. This also allows voters to get the experience of the voting process without the pressure of casting a ballot during the live meeting.
A few examples of test motions include asking voters for their preferred cookie type, a trivia question about your organization, the season of the year they like best, or something fun for voters, but different from the actual meeting votes.
Please note that each motion requires its own separate vote setup.
There are five steps to create a motion for your meeting:
Details
Enter the main details for your vote, such as the name, and start and end dates. The title is the way that you refer to your meeting, the start and end dates are the scheduled time for your meeting.
Select the security settings regarding who can view the results.
Ballot
Choose the voting system, the method by which votes are tallied and winners determined.
Enter the motion information. You will only enter one motion per setup. This will allow you to present one motion at a time during your meeting.
You can also add candidate profiles and photos.
Define the order of positions and order of choices/candidates on each question, including randomizing the order
Allow voters to abstain from voting, allow for write-ins, and capture comments
Notice
Voters access each ballot from the Meeting Page, so a notice will only need to be sent for your very first motion. Your Meeting Page is a central page from which voters access the various votes that are presented during a meeting. The Meeting Page can be branded with your logo and a custom Welcome message can be displayed. Voters will await the availability of each motion, amendment, or candidate position on this page. After voting, they will be automatically redirected to this page to await the next vote.
Meeting Page URL can be customized by you.
Edit your Organization Key to create a meaningful URL that voters can easily remember. An example of a MeetingVote URL is: https://electionbuddy.com/m/organization_key
Customize your Vote Key. The text entered for the Vote Key is used to customize the access link to your MeetingVote Vote, such as https://secure.electionbuddy.com/m/ABC/vote_key
The Vote Key also appears on the voting button on the meeting page, which allows users to log into the meeting.
Select a method to send notice to voters. Only the first MeetingVote should be configured to send notices. Subsequent MeetingVotes should be set to Create Notices Yourself.
Voters
Upload your voter list, or copy and paste voters from a document or spreadsheet.
If you're working with a small voter list, you can choose to type it in manually.
You can also import a voter list that you used in a previous vote setup.
During the registration process, you may find that some voter data is out of date. You can update your voter information during the running vote by copying your voter list; this will update the master voter list that can be used for future motions.
Review
Test the ballot to see how your voters will see it and use it, check the notice, review the voter list, finalize the vote details, and agree to the terms and conditions.
Ensure you have planned for voters who may join your organization during the meeting time period.
Stop here (for now)
Do not start your vote! MeetingVote motions are launched in real-time, so you will manually open and close the voting during your meeting.
Now that your first motion is built, you need to complete the setup of any subsequent motions as well as 'placeholder' motions.
Placeholder motions are pre-built motions without ballot information inputted yet.
This allows you to quickly enter ballot information and launch any last-minute voting that comes up during your meeting. Always plan ahead!
We will repeat the setup process, but the next round will be much quicker!
Please see our other help articles on setting up MeetingVote:
MeetingVote Setup - You are here!