Voters

In order for students to vote in any given election, they have to be “registered” to vote for that election. This means that each student will need to be assigned a unique Voter ID and Voter Key that they will use to login and vote.

The Voter ID and Voter Key can be thought of as a username/password. Just like any other online service that requires logging in (Facebook, Gmail, etc.), this combination is used to make sure that students can only vote once in the election(s) that they are eligible to vote in.

Voter ID & Key Patterns

As the election administrator, you will need to decide how you’re going to assign a Voter ID and Key to each student. The goal is to use something that is unique to that voter that only they would know, and their peers would not (i.e. it’s not general knowledge). The pattern most commonly chosen by schools is the student’s Student ID number as the Voter ID and their birthdate as the Voter Key.

Student ID numbers should be unique to the current roster of students attending the school, meaning that no two students would share the same ID number. This makes it an ideal candidate for the Voter ID which has to be unique to the election.

The Voter Key, which can be thought of as a voter’s password, is commonly set as the student’s birthday (formatted MM/DD/YYYY).

The reason we recommend this combination for the Voter ID and Key is because:

• Students should know their birthday and their student ID (or have a way to easily find it).
• It’s unlikely that students would know both the student ID and birthday of their peers.
• The school’s student information system should have this information readily available

Another benefit of using a consistent Voter ID and Voter Key pattern is that it makes it easier for you to announce the election. Instead of distributing logins to every student in the school, you can simply provide instructions on how to access the election (e.g. the election’s URL or your school’s subdomain) and the Voter ID/Key pattern. In the election settings you can also add a “Login Message” to your election that all voters will see when they access the election. This allows you to provide brief instructions with the chosen Voter ID/Key Pattern. For example:

Log in using your Student ID as the Voter ID and your birthdate (formatted MM/DD/YYYY, e.g. 02/18/2002) as the Voter Key

Using the Student ID number and the birthdate is just a suggestion based on what most schools are using. You can use anything you’d like for these values. Just remember that the Voter ID has to be unique to the election and be aware of the possibility of students voting on behalf of their peers.

Auto-generated Voter ID & Voter Key

In some cases it may not be possible to get a list of students along with their Student ID and Birthday. Just leave the Voter ID and Voter Key blank when adding voters and random values will be generated for you. Of course this means it’s up to you to distribute the login information to each student.

Voting by Email

You also have the option to provide an email address for each student. When the election starts, they’ll get an email from Election Runner with a direct link to vote in the election along with their auto generated Voter ID and Voter Key. When they click the link, the election will open up in their device’s browser and they’ll be automatically logged in to vote.