Online voting

How to use online voting in MyCommittee?

Online voting has been around in MyCommittee for a while as part of 'Offline meetings' but since recent, online voting is available on its own and can be used to conduct voting sessions during regular meetings.
Whether your members are in the meeting room or not, you can now setup a real-time online vote and view the result in minutes.

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Example online voting page (organizer view)

How to conduct a voting event?

There is nothing really to it. Setting up a vote only takes seconds. We'll go through the details in just a moment but from a high level only three things need to happen:

  • Create a vote.

  • Start the vote when members are ready to vote.

  • Stop the vote when members have voted.

Voila, the results of your vote are now available and stored forever.

Create a new vote

The easiest way to create an online vote is to go to the main meetings page and click on 'New online vote'. Alternatively, you can click on 'Decisions' to open the decisions page and click on 'New online vote' there.

New vote editor
Vote editor page

“Enter your question or proposition, confirm the vote type and choices and start voting.”


Vote type

For now, there are two vote types supported:

  • Multiple choice - Single answer: This is the most used type. It allows the voter to choose exactly one option from a list of choices.
  • Ranking: This allows the voter to re-order a list of choices according to instructions.

Choices

Each time you create a new vote, the choices are automatically pre-populated from the default choices template (that is Yes;No;Abstain).

If your board or committee typically uses another set of choices, click on 'Manage templates' and create your own choices template. Make sure to set your new template as the 'default' template. From now on, each time you create a new vote, your custom choices will be pre-populated automatically.
Learn more about decision templates here.

Considerations

  • When a vote seems necessary during a meeting, it's easy to quickly create a new online vote and come to a decision.
  • For resolutions, you can prepare all votes for a meeting in advance. Once a vote is created it will show up in the 'Draft votes' list on the Decision page. Only you (the organizer) can view these draft votes. During the meeting, you can start the votes one-by-one when the corresponding agenda items are being discussed.

Start voting

Once you are ready to start voting, click on the 'Start vote' button.

New vote editor
Vote editor page

Once the vote is started, an email, with a link to the vote, will be sent to all members immediately. The vote will now also show up for all members on the 'Decisions' page.

Considerations

  • For a vote to be successful, all members need to be available and online using either a laptop, tablet or phone to receive the email or access the vote directly.
  • The vote remains open until you manually stop it. You can agree on a time (for instance, 2 minutes) or wait until all members voted using the status page to verify.
  • Each voting member has exactly one vote. Members can update their vote as long as the vote remains open.

Stop voting

Click on 'Stop voting' to close the vote. The results will be calculated and displayed immediately.

New vote editor
Vote results page

Considerations

  • Once a vote is stopped, it is final and can not be restarted.
  • All members can access and view the detailed results of the vote.
  • Voting results are saved forever and can be access any time on the 'Decision' page or in the 'Reports' section.

Setting up an online vote is quick and easy and the voting process is secure, simple and transparent. Why not give it a try?


Please, let us know what you think about our online voting system and if you would like to see any future improvements.
You can contact us here with questions or suggestions.

(* online voting is available with any paid subscription)

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Dirk Op de Beeck

MyCommittee blog

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