How to test a Scheduled election setup
Once you are done with setting up your election, you should now proceed to testing it. To test your election setup, you need to ensure the following has been set up:
One demo voter (“John Doe”) with the “Email” field containing your email address.
One voting round which is displayed as “Active,” “Open,” and set as a “Demo.”
To test a template for an individual voter, go to the “Voters” tab.
Click on the magnifying glass of the voter you created earlier (“John Doe”).
Click the “@ Send email” button below the box containing the voter’s details.
Leave “Assembly Voting” as the text in the “Sender” field.
Under “Template,” choose the item “Login Info” from the dropdown menu.
Click “Send Email.” The email should be in the Demo voter’s inbox shortly afterwards.
Open your e-mail client to access the email from Assembly Voting entitled: “Here is the login information for Election 2024.”
Click the button “Go to login,” which will then open a new browser tab with the election front page.
Video Guide
Once the election front page is open, check that the “Election Code 1” has been prefilled in the first field and matches the code in the email.
Under “Birthdate,” insert the birthdate from the “John Doe” voter: 01011999.
Click on “Go to ballot.”
Once you are logged in, you should now be able to see the ballot and cast a vote.
Cast a ballot by choosing your candidate(s), clicking “Continue,” and then “Submit vote.” You have now voted and should see a receipt screen.
Go back to the backend of Electa and go to the “Voting rounds” tab.
Under the section “Currently active,” click on the “Example voting round.”
Click on the yellow “Close” button in the upper right-hand corner.
Go to the “Result” tab. Here, click on the “Start extraction” button. You can then follow the progress of the download.
Once the extraction process is complete, the result will appear on the page.
Optionally, should you want to save the results, click on the “Download results” button in the top right corner to download a zip file containing the results.
You have now successfully conducted a test of the election setup!
Video Guide
While testing, you might find things which you need to add or change before you are ready to prepare for the election event with the real data. For example, you may need to:
Update any changes to the contests.
Update the voter data and exchange test data with the real data you need.
Create a new voting round.
Once you have created the contest and it has been linked to the voting round, any further changes to the contest are blocked. To be able to make changes to the contest afterwards, you must use the option “Clear Election.” This function will delete all voter data, votes cast, voting rounds, threshold ceremony, and reports.
You should only use this function in the testing stage, specifically after you are done testing your election and are ready to set up the real election data. NEVER use this function when your real election event is already set up.
It is important you pay close attention to the following steps, as any wrong steps might affect or remove your election’s configuration.
First, make sure all voting rounds are “Closed.”
Go to “Summary” and click on the red “Clear Election” button.
A new screen pops up, after which you need to click on the red “Clear Election” button.
*Once data is cleared, it cannot be recovered. Make sure you are ready to delete the data before proceeding.
A prompt will then appear. Here, you type “clear_election” in the text field to confirm the action to remove cast votes and the extracted voting results.
Now, with the election cleared, you can go back to the contest and make changes.
*You have now deleted all voters, votes, voting rounds, reports, and the threshold ceremony. This will need to be set up once again.