Contents

• Election Stages
• Access to Information
• Starting an Election Process
  • Election Options for Admins
  • Election Settings
• Stage 1: Nomination
  • How Members Can Nominate
  • How Nominees can Respond
  • How Admins Can View Nominations
• Stage 2: Vetting
• Stage 3: Display Candidates
• Stage 4: Election Day
• Stage 5: Election Results

The Elections feature allows churches and dioceses to manage the entire elections process within ChMeetings. 

This feature is based on US election bylaws.

Elections are only available for Diocese accounts and churches subscribed to the Unlimited Plan.

Election Stages

There are 5 Election stages that ChMeetings uses to organize the process: 

1. NOMINATION: Members over 18 can nominate up to 6 people, who must be at least 21 and not be part of the election committee. Nominees can accept or reject the nomination. Self-nomination is not available.
2. VET NOMINEES: After nomination, Owners and Admins can see accepted and rejected nominations and also accept or reject candidates.
3. DISPLAY NOMINEES: Members can see all nominees who have accepted to participate.
4. ELECTION DAY: Members over 18 will be asked to vote up to 6 candidates
5. ELECTION RESULT: The day when the election results are displayed to all. Up to 6 elected people are displayed, by number of votes.

Access to Information

Access to election related information is managed as follows:

• Admins have access to creating and managing elections, vetting nominees, as well as adding an Election Committee;
• The Election Committee can see election results and communicate with nominees;
• Members have access to nomination, voting and results.

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Important: Elections occur only at the level of churches. You can create the election at the diocese level for all churches, but there is no cross-church election at the moment. This means that members can only nominate and vote for candidates who are part of the same church. 

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Starting an Election Process

To start an election, you need to be an Owner or Admin within ChMeetings and follow the steps below: 

1. Enable Elections from under Settings > Account Settings > Features.
2. Go to Member Portal > Elections. 
3. Click Create Election to get started.
   
4. In the Create Election window, enter the Election Name, then add the dates between which each stage of the elections takes place.
   1. Under the Display Nominees section, you also need to select the Election Admins. Click the field and select people from the dropdown. You can select more than one person.
5. Click Save when you are ready. At this point, the election is created and will begin at the set date, with candidate nomination.
   
   

Election Options for Admins

Once an Election entry is created, it is displayed within the dedicated section.

Clicking the options button corresponding to an election reveals options to:

• Edit the entry to adjust dates and committee members,
• View Statistics related to this election,
• Pause the election process,
• Delete the election entry. 

Clicking the election Name takes you to a dashboard, where you can view the following:

• Election stages overall and the current stage,
• Nominees,
• Candidates,
• Election Results.

 

Election Settings

Election Settings let you configure the minimum requirements for participation for nominators, nominees, and voters during the Nomination and Voting stages. To access these options, click the Settings (⚙) icon at the top left.

Under the Default Settings section, you can configure the following:

For the Nomination stage: 

1. The minimum age requirements to participate in elections for nominators and nominees,
2. The minimum number of nominations required to become a candidate

For the Voting Stage:

1. The maximum number of nominees each member can vote for
2. The maximum number of candidates each member can vote for
3. The number of top candidates to show as the final result

Mandatory fields required to participate in the elections: Turn on the toggle for the fields you want to make mandatory. Members who do not provide the required information cannot participate. The field options are: 

1. Email,
2. Mobile Phone,
3. Birthdate,
4. Photo,
5. Address

Nomination

On the election start date, the Candidate Nomination stage begins. 

How Members Can Nominate

Members see an Election card with the election name as the title on their homepage, which allows them to view the election stage and the committee; as well as to nominate.

Clicking Nominate Now allows members to search for people to nominate. If the person they want to nominate does not fulfill the requirements mentioned above, then their profile will not be returned by the search.

Clicking Next on the Nomination screen takes members to a consent screen, where they must acknowledge the election rules before they complete the nomination.

How Nominees can Respond

When a member is nominated, they will see the Election card on their homepage, displaying a notice that they have been nominated. To proceed, click View your Nomination.

At this point, nominees can either accept or reject the nomination:

• When accepting, they can add a Bio.
• When rejecting, they can add a Reason for Rejection.
  

  

• To change the Acceptance or Rejection and update the response, click Change. The Edit option allows nominees to edit the Bio or Reason for Rejection.
  

  

How Admins Can View Nominations

Once a member completes the nomination process, nominee information updates on the Admin Election Board. Here is where nominees are listed and categorized by whether they have more or less than 6 nominations - the necessary amount required in order to become a candidate. 

Admins can download a list of nominees, using the option on the right of the Nominated section.

Vetting

Once the Nomination period ends, Admins/Owners can vet nominees via their Election. Members with at least 6 nominations. Each candidate is displayed with their profile picture, name, and status. The available statuses are: 

• Accepted - The member accepted their nomination,
• Pending - The member has not yet responded to the nomination,
• Rejected - The member has rejected the nomination. 

The Candidates section can be filtered by status.

While nominee response is pending, Admins can remove the nomination.

Display Candidates

Once the vetting process completes, the final list of candidates is displayed to members, so that they can see bios and decide on who to vote for.

Election Day

On election day, members see an option to elect their preferred candidates. 

Members over 18 can cast up to 6 votes.

Election Results

On the final day of elections, the card displays the election results.