Accessing the Election

Election Runner provides multiple ways for students to access your elections. Because the platform is cloud-based, all voters will end up at the election’s designated URL through their device browser. This URL is unique to the election and acts as its landing page. It displays the election’s title, description, and voter login form. How they get there is up to you, but the most schools opt to configure a “subdomain” in their account settings.

School Subdomain

A subdomain would be something like yourschool.electionrunner.com (without the www) and acts as a landing page that displays all currently active elections that students can participate in. When a student clicks (or taps) on one of the elections, they will be directed to that election’s designated URL where they can login to vote.

Setting up a subdomain simplifies the process for announcing school-wide elections. Simply announce, “Students can vote for their student council representatives by visiting yourschool.electionrunner.com and selecting the election that applies to them”. This strategy works well with the previously mentioned Voter ID & Voter Key pattern along with utilizing the “Log in message” instructions.

The iOS & Android App

Students love their apps, so we created an Election Runner app for iOS and Android that can assist with the voting process. The app acts as a shortcut similar to the subdomain strategy. When launched, students will see a search box where they can type in the school’s name. After clicking on the school, they will be presented with a list of currently active elections.

It’s important to note that the app is not necessary for a voter to vote on a mobile device. The voting application is optimized for mobile usage by default. The mobile app only acts as a shortcut for opening the election in the device’s browser.

Election Short URL

Elections also come with a “short URL” that when accessed will redirect voters to the election’s designated URL. This URL will look something like: http://j.mp/2gYLA which is considerably easier to type than the actual URL (e.g. vote.electionrunner.com/election/Pf6e4).

Voter Emails

If you opted to provide an email address for each student, then they will receive an email with a link to the election’s designated URL. Clicking on this link will automatically log them in to vote.