If a candidate is disqualified/ withdraws from an election after polling has started, what will happen to their votes?
You can withdraw/ disqualify a candidate in Elections Admin - if you withdraw/ disqualify a candidate once votes have been cast any votes for that individual will be transferred to subsequent preferences. So any first preference votes for that individual will become first preference votes for the next preference (if there is no next preference they become abstentions), any second preferences for that person will be treated as second preferences for the next preference and so forth. No votes are lost and preference order is preserved.
Why is our election not being displayed on our election page? The election is live.
This will either be because the election list widget hasn't been created and/or added to the page content or because the election list widget is set to display elections for a different organisation. If you edit your webpage and don't see an election list widget in the page content (this will most likely be the word elections in curly brackets), then you need to create the widget and add it to the page content. For more information about how to do this, take a look at the Displaying your election support page.
If the election list widget is in your page content, then edit the page, go to the widgets tab and edit the elections list widget. Check which organisation you have created your election in (you can do this in Elections Admin). If the widget is pointing at the wrong organisation, then you can amend this on the widget, or if the election exists in a child organisation of the organisation the widget is set to (i.e. the widget's organisation is set to your main 'Union' organisation but the election has been created in an 'Elections' organisation which is a child grouping of 'Union', tick the 'Include child organisations' option on the elections list widget settings and 'Save'.
We're running an election which contains many posts. Are you able to run the election count for us?
Yes, please contact the MSL helpdesk with the election title and dates and we will be able to send you over a quotation for MSL to run the election count on your behalf. You will be sent the counts for each of the posts in an MS Excel spreadsheet.
A student is trying to nominate themselves/ vote in an election but the election says they're not eligible. Why is this the case?
If you have created the election within a certain organisation and set the election visibility settings to be members only, double check the student is a member of the organisation you have created the election within. If you have created an organisation called 'Elections' for example, and set this as the owning organisation for the election, unless there is a membership grouping within the Elections organisation that the student is a member of the chances are they will not meet the election visibility requirements.
How do I set the requirements on a post where only a subset of students can nominate/ vote? There isn't a data parameter which includes only these individuals.
If there is no other way to recognise this subset of students within the system, you can import the students into a grouping manually using an MS Excel spreadsheet with identifiers (student ID, email address etc.) There's more information about how to do this on the "Import data" support page - scroll down to "Import Membership List". Once you have imported the individuals into this grouping then you can set the grouping you have manually populated as a requirement on the post.
Can I tell if a student voted on the website or through our MSL App or Polling Booth?
Votes now record the device type when submitted, so making it easy to pull reports of ‘votes on website vs votes on polling app’ and similar.
How can I make sure our election is as secure as possible from electoral fraud?
Take a look at some steps you can follow to safeguard your election here.