Proxy voting
Proxy voting is a method that allows a person to delegate their voting power to someone else, often because they cannot attend a meeting in person. To ensure a clear understanding of this guide, we differentiate between two actors:
“Proxy“: The person who is designated to vote on behalf of another person and in this scenario is also eligible to vote for themselves in the election.
“Voter“: The person that has delegated their voting power to the proxy.
In Electa, there are three ways to deal with a proxy voting situation. This guide provides an overview of the setup needed as well as the voting process for all three scenarios. For all scenarios, start by setting up your election system as you would normally – Refer to the Quick Guide to Setting Up a Scheduled Election for guidance in this process. Ensure that you have, at least, a contest, voter group(s), voters, and a voting round.
Note that you only need one of the scenarios described below to manage an election with proxy voting.
Separate sets of voting credentials
In the first scenario, you set up your election as you normally would and when uploading the voter information to the system, ensure that there are two separate voters with different credentials each – these will be the credentials for the proxy and the person they are voting on behalf of.
Here, the proxy has both a set of credentials for themselves as well as a set of credentials for the person they are voting on behalf of, allowing them to access the system and vote twice.
This way, the voting experience remains unchanged and all the proxy has to do is log in to the system and vote twice, each time with a different set of credentials. The result files will be able to distinguish two separate voter ids who has voted.
Additionally, the proxy can receive both their credentials and the ones for the person they are voting on behalf of via one single campaign (email or SMS) – read more on campaigns here. Alternatively, you can create separate templates for each set of credentials to make it easier for the proxy to differentiate between their own credentials and the ones for the person they are voting on behalf of.
See below a video guide for the end-user frontend flow:
Weighted vote
In the second scenario, the proxy holds one set of credentials which will allow them to vote both for themselves and for the voter they are voting on behalf of. This scenario is quite similar to scenario 2, however, in this case, the contest does not allow for the distribution of votes. Instead the selection in the ballot cast will be submitted as one, but it will be weighted more.
This scenario requires that the proxy voter needs to have a weight higher than 1. When casting the vote, the selection in the ballot will have the weight as it was assigned to the voter.
In this scenario, remember to disable or delete the voter who has given their vote to a proxy from the voter list to prevent them from voting.
See below a video guide for the end-user frontend flow:
Distributed votes
In the third scenario, the proxy holds one set of credentials that allows them to vote for themselves and the voter they are voting on behalf of. In this case, when casting a vote, the proxy distributes their vote between their “own” vote and the person they’re voting on behalf of.
This scenario requires some additional set up in the backend:
The proxy voter needs to have a weight higher than 1 to reflect their own vote + the proxy they have received.
The contest needs to “Allow distributing weight“.
In this scenario, remember to disable or delete the voter who has given their vote to a proxy from the voter list to prevent them from voting.
See below a video guide for the backend set-up:
As for the end-user experience, the voting process changes slightly:
Note that the view below is only visible with a voter who has a weight of 2 or more when the “allow distributing weight” is toggled on for the contest. For a voter who has a weight of 1 the voting flow will remain unchanged as they have no weight to be distributed.
Once you log in to the system, you will be met with the usual ballot.
After confirming your selection, the system will then allow you to edit the assigned number of votes given to your first selection:
You do this by changing the number in the field “Number of ballots to assign“ from 2 to 1, for example.
Click “Confirm and assign“ and this will lead you to an overview, where you can “add new ballot selection“.
Now you have distributed the weight of your vote in two different ballot selections.
Click “Submit vote” to cast the vote on behalf of yourself and the person you are also voting on behalf of.
See below a video guide for the end-user frontend flow: