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Processing Paper Ballots (Offline Election)

I want to process paper ballots (an offline election)…

  1. Once logged onto SUMS click onto “Elections” then “>>Elections” on the left-hand side of the page
  2. There will be four options in blue boxes on the top right of the page, select “+Election”
  3. In the name box, this is the name of the role you would like to elect for, for example ‘Course Rep’ or ‘SU President’. For Offline elections, please be as specific as possible as filters/restrictions will not be applied later on

  4. Method – please select which method best suits the election you are holding and complies with your bye-laws. Options are:

    a. Referendum

    b. STV

    • If your bye-laws require RON (Re-open nominations) to be a candidate, click this, this will display a blue tick

    • If your bye-laws require any tie in votes to be settle in person by the toss of a coin, please select ‘Prevent Tie Break’ this will display a blue tick. If this is not selected and two or more candidates receive the same number of votes, the system will automatically randomly select a winner and break the tie

  5. Voting location – select ‘Offline’

  6. Number of positions – how many roles of this type are to be elected for?
  7. Display order should be left blank
  8. Unless you wish to allow online nominations, ‘Allow Nominations’ should not be selected. If so, please see this section of the ‘Creating a new election’ process in this guide
  9. Select ‘Allow Spoilt Votes’ if your bye-laws require this

  10. Enter voting opening and closing times as shown in the light grey text

    • These times should be when the staff member will be inputting the paper ballots, not the time that the vote was held with the students

  11. Click ‘Submit’

  12. Once back to the main election page, find the newly set up election in the ‘Current’ tab, add all candidates required (see How to manually add candidates section of this guide)
  13. Once back to the main election page, find the newly set up election in the ‘Current’ tab, click the white ‘Votes’ button
  14. Enter each paper ballot one at a time, clicking submit at the end of each vote