Using Involve For Elections & Voting

Franklin Alves

July 17, 2023 20:13

Whether you're ready to elect your new executive board or voting for your favorite senior year t-shirt design, you can use Involve to make voting quick, easy, and accessible. This article will discuss best practices for running an election, common fields used in an election form, election form settings, and viewing your results!

For more information, check out a video presentation from our Momentum Summit on hosting elections through Involve:

Election Best Practices

Require login for your election/voting form. This will allow the system to track who has completed the form. Which goes hand in hand with...
Limit submissions to one per user. This way, folks can only vote one time!
Set a start and end time for your election form.
Utilize Content fields to highlight candidates! Content fields can contain pictures and statements from the candidates, which will allow voters to make an educated choice when they vote!
Image fields are awesome for uploading headshots for a professional look!
Choice fields are the ideal choice for voting. They eliminate write-in errors, give a clear list of the choices available, and make viewing results much easier!
CAMPUS ADMINS: Be sure your institution's data file is up-to-date prior to election season to ensure everyone that needs access to Involve has it!

Common Form Settings For Election Forms

Here are some tips for customizing the Settings for your election form! To learn more about Form Settings and how to apply them, check out our support article! Here are a few settings that are commonly used with elections:

Responses

Success Action: This field allows you to control what a user sees after they submit the completed form. There are two options:

Success Message: Design a custom message that shows after the form is submitted. The message can be simple text or you can use images, links, and YouTube videos to create eye catching messages.
Success Page: Redirect responders to the website of your choice. Holding an SGA election? Redirect voters to your SGA Organization page!

Visibility

Require login: When checked, responders will be required to log in before completing the form. Only active users with valid log in credentials will be able to complete the election form. You can require login AND have the responses be anonymous! Requiring login also ensures that users can vote only once when selected in conjunctions with other settings. (See the "Limit Responses" section below.)
Anonymous: When checked, the respondent’s answers are made anonymous so that you can collect data without having names associated with responses.
Location: This section allows you to choose where the election form is visible to other users. Campus Admins can make the election form campus wide
Attached to Organization: Attaching to an organization will make the form visible on the organization’s Involve page. You may attach the form to multiple organizations. Link it to your Student Government's Organization page or your department page for easy access!

Note: Once an organization is selected in this field, you can choose whether or not membership in the selected organization is required in order to view/complete the form. Limiting access by membership is ideal when you just want people in your organization to vote versus a campus wide election.

Availability

This section allows you to dictate when a form will be available and how many times folks can vote!

Limit Responses

Per User: This limits the number of times a single user can complete the form.
Per Form: This limits the number of responses the form will accept. If you only want to accept the first 100 votes for a t-shirt design, for example, you can use this setting to stop accepting votes as soon as 100 votes have been received.

Date/Time: This allows you to set time limits on when responses will be accepted for a form. If these fields are left blank, the form will be available immediately and remain open indefinitely.

Common Fields Used

There's a wide variety of fields to use when building your election form. Here are some of our favorites! For more information, check out our in depth article on

Basic Form Fields!

Text Fields

Text fields have several layout options depending on how much information responders will need to enter.

1. Single Line: Perfect for brief responses:

2. Paragraph: For responses that require more detail, choose Paragraph and give respondents a little extra room:

Character limits can be set for both Single Line and Paragraph Text fields. Under "Text Settings", place a check mark next to Restrict Length and enter the total minimum and/or maximum characters you'd like:

3. Rich-Text: Allows for rich content like YouTube videos, hyperlinks, and text formatting.

Choice Field

Choice fields allow for responders to choose from a list of options. Below is a description of the three options available for your choice field. Pick the style that works best for you!

Dropdown: Respondents will click into the field and choose from a dropdown list of options:

List Options: This setting will allow respondents to see all their options and click on the choice they want:

Checkbox: Creates a list of options with radio buttons

Need to allow folks to choose multiple options? No problem! All three of the choice fields can allow for multiple choice selections!

Viewing Results

You can easily view the results of the election by viewing the form response summary. From the left navigation menu, click on Forms, then click on the name of your election form. This will bring you to a list of all the responses. Click the Summary button:

The Summary view will produce easy-to-read pie charts summarizing the results. Hover your mouse over each section to display more detailed information including number of votes and percentage of votes: