Running National Elections

[MsDGP007]

Hello...

Sorry for bringing up old threads...but some of these topics are interesting .

We hold national elections online. In the private area of our website, the ballot is made available where it tags the user name and IP address so you can only vote once. Yet the results are sent to our national e-mail box anonymously...which is pretty cool.

(Our last election was the first time we ran it this way...it was a great system).

All of our sisters can vote - active or not. Only alumna or sisters who are graduating sisters (our board re-convenes in May) can run for offices. There is a nomination stage, candidate acceptance, and distribution of qualifications to all sisters before voting takes place. It takes about two months from start to finish.

[preciousjeni]

This is an interesting topic. Two issues come to mind...

I realize Z-Chi might do things differently now, but

Originally Posted by ZChi4Life

Each chapter gets one vote for each position. If there is only one person running for that position, we use Robert's Rules... RR says that if one person is running for a position, they get it by default.

Robert's Rules allows an organization to make changes to the rules to suit its needs. I can't imagine that it would be a bad idea to vote against a candidate that wasn't ready for office, because, let's face it, not everyone that runs is really best for a position.

Also,

Originally Posted by MsDGP007

We hold national elections online. In the private area of our website, the ballot is made available where it tags the user name and IP address so you can only vote once. Yet the results are sent to our national e-mail box anonymously...which is pretty cool.

Not to suggest that members aren't honest () but what if they use different computers to vote more than once? And, what happens if a campus computer lab has the same IP address. That would mean anyone using that lab could only vote once.

I'm afraid there are issues in any way elections are handled. But, we do what's best for our organizations.

[MsDGP007]

Originally Posted by preciousjeni

Not to suggest that members aren't honest () but what if they use different computers to vote more than once? And, what happens if a campus computer lab has the same IP address. That would mean anyone using that lab could only vote once.

I'm afraid there are issues in any way elections are handled. But, we do what's best for our organizations.

Ah...you have the mind of a programmer :-) It was also tied to username. So both the IP and username must have been unique. So let's say someone voted....their IP and username are logged. They go to another computer and log in...it will not let them vote. Also, if two women tried to use the same computer (where one voted...logged out...then another one logged in)...it also would not work. Although that wasn't necessary to prevent duplicate voting, it was a help in the aspect of confidentiality...because we felt that each person's votes should be private.

As far as duplicate IP address, a particular Internet service provider will generate dynamic IPs in a certain range for the computers accessing the internet using their service. That is why someone can be found in a general geographic area via their IP. The first 3 digits will determine the ISP. However most of us have dynamic IPs...not static. It is possible that two people at two different times could have an IP address that is the same if they go to a computer lab. However you looking at a 10 digit number where the last 7 are randomized. I'm don't know how to compute exactly what the probability would be that the same number would be generated twice...but it seems to me it would be in the millions (I say that because I believe PA has 8 digits in their drivers licenses...and the state has millions of licensed drivers). That's why the software gave us the option of logging the IP....because I'm sure they wrote the program with organizations much larger and complex than ours which may not have registered site users.