Managing votes

This is the screen that you will see at your first login when you have not added any votes yet

Different states of a vote

There are three states a vote can have in NemoVote: Draft, open, closed.

• Draft vote: This vote is still in draft mode. You can still change all vote details (name, voting rights etc.). This vote is not visible to voters. Changes that you make to voter lists (and thus to voting rights) will still affect this vote.
• Open votes: Open votes are live. You can no longer edit them. Voters can now vote as long as the vote is open. Changes to voter lists (like removing voters) will not have an effect of this vote, as the instance a vote is open it has a digital snapshot of all eligible voters that cannot be altered.
• Closed votes: Votes that have expired or have been manually closed by the admin. Voting is no longer possible.

Creating your first vote

Click on + Create vote to start building your first vote. You will be redirected to a page where you can set up all the details of your vote.

Vote Title

You can add a title your vote by typing in the form field shown above. In order to enable fast voting without many settings and clicks we kept the vote title optional. If you don’t fill the field out, NemoVote will add an automatic title with a date/timestamp.

We recommend filling in a custom vote title so that its clear for each voter what they are voting on.

Furthermore, you can add a description explaining your vote, you can add images here and much more through the rich text editor.

Vote Choices

Here you can add the choices that the voter will have to pick from. Currently, it is possible to add 2-100 choices. You can add or remove choices with the (-) ad (+) buttons.

Again, naming the choices is optional. If you don’t name the choices, only the numbers will appear for the voters. This may be an option, if you have a different mode of showing the choices to the voters (e.g. a PowerPoint presentation) during the vote.

Make it a Motion

If you click "Make it a Motion", NemoVote will repopulate the vote with the 3 choices shown above. You may still edit them and add or delete more choices. This was introduced to allow a fast vote on amendments without having to type out the options every time.

Multiple Choice Voting

With the setting of the vote discussed that far, your voters will be able to pick only one selection out of the given choices. It is also possible to offer them to select more than one choice (multiple choice). We explain this specific setting in a different article.

Vote settings

Now the vote settings. The text is kept very easy to understand, but we will go through it quickly:

• Who can see the results?

You set here if only administrators or also the voters will be able to access the results in NemoVote. The time when they will be able to see the results is set in the next step!

• Should the results be accessible before the vote is closed?

We call this function live results. If enabled, the voter will get access to the current results immediately after they voted. If disabled, results can only be access after a vote is closed.

• Should the usernames of users who have already voted be displayed?

We call this function the in-vote roll call. If enabled, NemoVote will enable showing the information who has already voted in a vote and who has not voted. If you want to keep this information private, you can disable it here.

• Synchronise changes to voting rights automatically for this vote after it has been opened?

If this option is set to "Yes", voters who are added to the system or a voter list after the vote has already been opened are automatically added to the respective vote and are granted voting rights. If they are deleted, they also lose their voting rights if they have not already voted.

• Should the voter’s choice remain anonymous?

Here you can choose between a secret and a non-secret ballot. When choosing the secret ballot, the votes are saved in a way that makes it impossible to link a vote choice to an individual voter – even on the database level. In the non-secret ballot NemoVote will save the data of which voter voted what and this will be accessible for the administrator.

• Should the vote be closed automatically?

We will explain this function in the next chapter.

• How should the voting weight be calculated?

Here you can choose how NemoVote should calculate the weights of voters for this specific vote. You can either use the weighting via voter lists or you can choose to use the weighting of each individual voter.

If a voter has no vote weighting set the weight from the associated voter list will be used.

More details are explained in our article on weighted voting.

Automatic closing of Votes

You can let NemoVote automatically close votes for you. This may be important for keeping certain deadlines – e.g. all voting shall close at midnight. Once you enable it, the form above appears. You can either type your preferred close time in the format YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm, or you can click on the date picker icon.

Voting rights

Here you can add voter lists that will be eligible for voting in this vote. In the example above no custom voter list are created, therefore the voters voter list is set as default.

Create vs. Create and open

Once you are finished with all the settings for you vote you have two options. Well, three actually:

• Cancel: This will cancel everything that you entered here and bring you back to the overview of votes
• Create: this will save your vote as a draft
• Create and Open: this will automatically set your vote to "open", you won't be able to edit it and voters will be able to start voting.

Actions in the Draft Votes overview

You have the following actions available for draft votes:

• Duplicate: will create a copy of that vote with all its settings and immediately open the edit page where you can edit it. The vote is not opened that way, you still have to open it.
• Open: this will set the vote live.
• Edit: Here you can edit the vote (only available for drafts)
• Delete: deletes this vote (only available for draft and closed votes)

Actions in the Open Votes overview

You have the following actions available for open votes:

• Duplicate: will create a copy of that vote with all its settings and immediately open the edit page where you can edit it. The vote is not opened that way, you still have to open it.
• Close: Closes the voting (only available for open votes)
• Progress: this will show you the vote progress (only available for open votes, when live results are disabled)
• Voter ballots: shows only when live results are available, you can check here the individual ballot choice for each voter if the vote is set up as a public ballot
• Show on projector will show you the vote results in a way where you can add or remove displayed columns.
• Copy vote URL: Each vote has a unique link address. You can copy that link and send it to your voters and when opening it they will be immediately redirected to that vote (after login in of course)

Actions in the Closed Votes overview

You have the following actions available for votes:

• Duplicate: will create a copy of that vote with all its settings and immediately open the edit page where you can edit it. The vote is not opened that way, you still have to open it.
• Results: will show you the vote results; available for open votes (when live results are enabled) and closed votes
• Voter ballots: you can check here the individual ballot choice for each voter if the vote is set up as a public ballot
• Show on projector will show you the vote results in a way where you can add or remove displayed columns.
• Export PDF: Export the vote results as PDF.
• Delete: deletes this vote (only available for draft and closed votes)

Vote progress and vote results(admin)

This is what the vote progress and vote results page (depends on if it's an open or a closed vote) for the administrator looks like: as you can see the administrator has in this example no access to the live results and to the in-vote roll call because they were disabled.