Elections and member votes

Run a board election or put a question to members. Secret ballots by email and on the member page, with turnout, quorum and results.

Go to Votes, under More on a phone, and start a board election or a question, such as a bylaw change.

Setting it up

1. Go to Votes. For an election, add the offices and the candidates. To let members put names forward, tick Take nominations from members first and set when nominations open and close. Members nominate themselves or someone else from their member page, and each nomination waits for an officer to approve it.
2. For a question, choose yes or no, or several choices, and how it passes: just the count, more than half, or two thirds of the yes and no votes, whatever your bylaws say.
3. Set when voting opens and closes, the quorum if your bylaws have one, and whether members can change their vote until it closes.
4. Read the ballot email and press Approve and schedule. Nothing goes to members before you do.

Who can vote

Members in good standing at the moment voting opens: paying, in their grace period, complimentary and life members. Each person in a household gets their own vote. The voter list is fixed when voting opens, so someone who joins or lapses afterwards does not change it.

While it runs

renuzy opens the vote on time and emails each voter a ballot with a personal link that works once, between 9am and 6pm your club's time. Members can also vote from their member page. Two days before it closes, anyone who has not voted gets one reminder. You see turnout as it happens and the list of who has voted, never how anyone voted.

A secret ballot

renuzy keeps who has voted and how they voted in separate places. A ballot is stored with no name, no time and no order. When members cannot change their vote, nothing links a ballot back to a person. When they can, the ballot is filed under a code made from the vote, the member and a secret key that only renuzy's server holds, so their own ballot can be replaced; officers cannot work it out, though someone with both renuzy's database and that key could. Results are hidden until voting closes.

If your bylaws call for an open ballot, untick Secret ballot when you set the vote up. Members are told it is an open vote, and once it closes officers see how each member voted online.

Paper ballots

Voting at a meeting? Check Who has voted first so nobody votes twice, count the paper ballots and enter the numbers under Paper ballots counted at a meeting. They are added to the online votes and shown as hand counted.

Results

When it closes, renuzy counts it and emails the results to your officers, with turnout and whether quorum was met. A tie is marked as a tie; your bylaws decide it. When you are ready, press Share the results to email members and show them on the members' club page. After an election, the Update the bank signers item on Good standing gets a date 30 days later.

Once a vote closes, each answer or candidate shows as a bar, with online votes in full colour and hand counted ones lighter. Turnout shows as a ring, and where you set a quorum, a bar with a black line at the quorum. Every chart has Show the numbers with the same figures in a table.