Sitemanager Ballot Administration Program

Ballot Administration Manual

Overview

The Ballot program is a Web based software system utilized to build online voting ballots and to manage online elections. The Ballot program may be accessed from any current Sitemanager account or by accessing the Ballot program administration Web location, http://www.telusys.net/gballot-bin/private/nph-elections.

The Ballot system works by allowing an administrator to create one or more elections. Each election can have any number of positions or offices that will be on the ballot. For each position or office, the administrator specifies one or more candidates. When all of the candidates have been entered and all of the ballot positions have been specified, the election setup is complete and the ballot is ready for use. The Ballot program provides a link that must be utilized by voters. Voting results, during, and after an election, are accessible via a link in the Ballot Administration program.

Step 1: Getting Started - Creating an Election

The first step in holding an online vote is to create an election. Access the Ballot Administration link in your Sitemanager account or access the Ballot Administration program directly at the following link:

http://www.telusys.net/gballot-bin/private/nph-elections

You will be prompted to sign in with your Sitemanager user name and password. If you encounter problems signing in contact the Telusys Technical Support department at support@telusys.net.

After successfully signing in you will be presented with a list of all elections you have previously created and a blank form to create a new election. The first step in creating an election is to specify an Election Start Date and Time and Election End Date and Time. The start date and end dates control when a ballot will be accepted for an election. If the voter tries to submit their ballot before or after this time period, they will be prompted that the election is not accepting submissions.

Next, enter a title for the election. The Election Title will be displayed prominently as a heading for your election. Election titles may be up to 256 characters in length, which is about 3 lines of typed text. You may enter formatting HTML in an election title but you should not enter HTML links or other complex HTML in the title. Next you will need to enter instructional text to describe your election or to let the voter know what they should do. Also, you will need to enter text to be displayed after a voter has submitted their ballot. The instructional text may be up to 10,000 characters in length and the text to be displayed after a ballot is submitted may be up to 5,000 characters in length. HTML or regular text may be utilized in these text boxes. If HTML <br> or <p> codes are utilized in these text boxes the Ballot system will assume you are using HTML and that you will manually specify all of the line breaks. Otherwise, the Ballot system will create paragraph breaks and line breaks for you. It is advisable that you include an HTML link back to your Web site in the text to be displayed after a ballot is submitted. The Ballot program does not create any Web links back to an administrator's Web site.

The security settings for the election must be set next. You may allow anyone to submit a ballot or you may allow only voters with a valid ID to submit a ballot. You may also allow a voter to vote once or multiple times. If you specify that only voters with a valid ID may submit a ballot then you must submit a security file listing out all of the valid ID numbers or codes. The Ballot program does not utilize user names and passwords, it only utilizes ID numbers or codes. If you will be utilizing a security file you must prepare a text file with one ID number or code per line. The ID numbers or codes should not have quotes or special characters around them. The security file must be an ascii text file and not an application file such as MS Word, Excel, or Access. You may use these programs to create the file but you must save or export your data as text. Create your file and save it on your computer's hard drive. Utilize the Ballot Administration program's "Browse" button to select your file from your hard drive and send it to the Ballot system. Unless an error is detected you will not receive any on-screen feedback of the acceptance of your security file. If you would like to receive feedback regarding the number of security records in the system for a specific election, click on the "View Results" link for that particular election.

If you wish to permanently and irreversibly delete an election click on the check-box in the right hand column on the same line as the election's title and then click on the Delete button. WARNING: You will not be prompted to confirm your deletion.

Finally, if you wish to clear out all of the responses and votes for an existing election, you may type the words "Clear All Votes" in the box provided. This feature is useful for clearing out test responses before an election is made live. If you clear your responses the votes will be permanently and irreversibly deleted. You will not be able to recover or undo your request to clear the information.

Click on the "Add" button to save your entered information. You will be prompted to go back and adjust your information if any errors are detected.

After an election is created, you may click on the title of the election to edit your previously entered information and settings.

Step 2: Editing Candidates

After you have created an election, you will see the election's title listed in the main administration page. Click on the "Candidates" HTML link next to the title of an election to enter the information for all of the candidates in the election. You will be presented with a list of previously entered candidate information and a blank form to enter a new candidate. You will enter the information for all candidates for all positions and offices in this administrative section. Later, you will assign candidates to each ballot position.

First, enter the candidate's first name, last name, and their credentials. Next, in the main information section you may enter up to 10,000 characters of information for each candidate. You may utilize HTML, but please note that the use of HTML line breaks and paragraph break codes signals to the Ballot system that you will be specifying all of your line breaks manually.

You may enter an optional photo in GIF or JPG format for each candidate. You may manually scale your photos on your desktop using your own software before sending them to the Ballot program or you may use the pull-down "Photo Size" scale to increase or decrease the size of your images. Select a photo from your hard drive using the the "Browse" button, do not change the text that appears in the box to the left of the "Browse" button after you have made your selection. Select a "Photo Alignment Style" to specify how the photo will be displayed relative to the main text entered previously. If you wish to have a caption displayed below the photo enter your text in the "Photo Caption" box. It is recommended that you keep the "Photo Caption" text brief.

Click on the "Add" button to save your entered information. You will be prompted to go back and adjust your information if any errors are detected.

You may edit or modify a previously entered candidate by clicking on the candidate's name while it is listed on the screen. You may delete an existing candidate by clicking on the check-box on the same line as the candidate's name. WARNING: You will not be prompted to confirm your deletion. Click on the "Delete" button to delete the item.

Step 3: Edit Your Ballot

After you have created an election, you will see the election's title listed in the main administration page. Click on the "Ballot" HTML link next to the title of an election to enter the positions and offices on the ballot and to assign specific candidates to specific offices. You will be presented with a list of previously entered ballot information and a blank form to enter a new ballot position. You will enter the information for all positions and offices in this administrative section.

In the blank form on the Ballot section you will specify the settings for each position or office on your ballot. Begin by entering a letter or number that will be utilized to determine the order of that office/position on the ballot. For example, if you would like "President" to be the first office that the voter will see on the ballot, type in a sort order number such as "1" or "01". In our example subsequent ballot positions/offices would have sort numbers such as "2", "3" and "4".

Next, enter the title for the office or position. Here are some examples of titles: "President", "Vice-President", "Delegate", "Board or Directors", or "Treasurer". Titles may be up to 500 characters in length. After the title has been entered you may optionally enter additional information for the position. The additional information may be up to 10,000 characters in length. You can use this field to describe the office or position, or to instruct the voter as to how many selection they can make for the position.

For each position, you must enter a minimum number of candidates that a voter must select and a maximum number of candidates that a voter may select. Enter "0" for the minimum if a vote for a particular office or position is not required. If you have a maximum number, please include instructions for the voter in the position information text box. For example, you can set the maximum to "4", and instruct the voter to "Please vote for up to 4 delegates from the following list of 10 candidates."

Then, click on the check-box next to each candidate that will be running for this position or office. Click on the "Add" button to save the information to your ballot.

Previously entered ballot offices and positions may be edited by clicking on the title for each office or position. You may delete an existing office or position by clicking on the check-box on the same line as the office or position title. WARNING: You will not be prompted to confirm your deletion. Click on the "Delete" button to delete the item.

Step 4: Make Your Election Live

Access the Ballot main administration page and click on the title of an election you wish to make live. At the top of the page you will see a text box labelled "Public HTML Link". You may add this Web location to a link on a page on your Web site or send the link to your voters via e-mail. The Public HTML Link is the Web address of the online ballot form.

It is important that you do not allow the link to break into multiple lines if you e-mail it or copy it, otherwise it won't function correctly.

The location displayed in the "Public HTML Link" link box is the Web location, if you wish to make it into a clickable link on a Web page, HTML link tags must be added. You may use the following example as a guide as to how to setup an HTML link:

If the "Public HTML Link" location is:

http://www.telusys.net/gbp/nph-bdisplay1?&eid=123456789

The HTML for the link, with added elements indicated in red, would be:

<a href="http://www.telusys.net/gbp/nph-bdisplay1?&eid=123456789">Click Here to Vote</a>

Step 5: Viewing Results

You may view election results by accessing the Ballot main administration page and then clicking on the "Results" link next to the title of an election. Current voting totals are displayed for each office/position and for each candidate. At the top of the results screen, you may view how many ballots have been submitted. Also if you are using a security file and ID numbers, you can see how many voters from your security list have finished voting.

The results screen has two listings, one with the candidates listed in the same order they appear on the ballot and a second listing where the candidates are ranked in each position according to the number of votes they have received. Candidates with equal numbers of votes have equal rankings in the report.