Choice Voting is a private company that enables elections to be held online. In the last 18 months they have helped over 300 schools run electronic elections.
This page explains how Choice Voting could be used to run school governor elections. I also asked Managing Director Jason Hawkins whether the DfE approve of this software, how they handle GDPR and privacy concerns and how they ensure ballots are anonymous but only eligible people can vote.
The Constitution Regulations 2012 specifically permit electronic parent governor ballots in maintained schools (as long as a paper option is offered too) and academy trusts can choose to permit electronic ballots. It’s also possible to hold staff governor elections online as long as the election authority permits it.
Disclaimer: I have never used Choice Voting to run an election so I can’t vouch for them personally. If your school have used their service please get in touch as I would love to hear your views, whether positive or negative. I have not been paid to feature this company on Ask A Clerk.
How is the software installed?
The Choice Voting software runs in your web browser, it is not installed locally on your PC.
How is the election set up?
First the school signs up for an account and sets the basic details of the election such as the closing date and the number of vacancies to be filled. The candidate names are added, along with their election statements.
Next, details of eligible voters can be typed in one by one or you can import a comma separated values (CSV) file, which can be generated by Excel or another spreadsheet program. The importing process is explained here and a sample file is provided so you can see the headings you need in the spreadsheet.
There are two ways to register eligible voters. First, you can use their real names and email addresses. Second, if you do not wish to input these personal details you could instead assign a reference number to each voter and type that number in instead.
The advantage of the first option is that the software can send out invitations via email asking people to vote; the disadvantage is that you need an email address for every voter.
Schools can schedule a demo of the software where the company will talk you through the process.
How do people vote?
Once the election has been launched voters visit a web page to cast their vote. If they click the link in an email sent directly from Choice Voting they will be automatically logged in.
They will see the candidate names and statements and asked to choose their preferred candidate(s). The software prevents them from casting multiple votes.
Once the election has closed the school logs in to their account and the results are available to view, with the votes automatically counted by the software.
How much does it cost to run one election?
The price depends on how many voters are eligible to take part in the election (not the number of votes eventually cast), so in effect it will depend on the size of your school.
A calculator allows you to find the rough price for your school, but the company offer discounts specifically for school elections with over 400 voters so this is a rough guide only. (Remember that in parental governor elections the usual rule is one vote per parent per vacancy, not one vote per family.)
If you have 500 eligible parent voters, for example, the rough cost to run one election is £67.50. For 1000 voters it becomes £112.50. For 2000 voters the cost is around £202.50.
Schools can run unlimited elections for a fixed annual fee. You can also run elections with fewer than 20 voters for free in order to test the system.
Can the school see how someone voted?
No. The person with the Choice Voting login details sees the results of the election but could not look up, for example, how Mr Bob Smith voted as the votes are shown anonymously.
If voters have been added to the system using their real names and email addresses they are assigned a “voter key” and a “voter ID” to anonymise them. These are strings of number and letters, so a voter ID might look like this: JPQEUZVTKPQ6.
Does the DfE approve of this software?
I asked the Managing Director of Choice Voting, Jason Hawkins, to address this question and his reply is below.
“Whilst we haven’t had conversation with DfE directly, we work alongside an independent scrutineer organisation that is registered for parliamentary elections and House of Lords elections and we work closely together to ensure we meet the requirements of many organisations.
“We deal with political parties and trade unions as well as charities on a daily or weekly basis and have conducted many thousands of elections with these organisations.”
Jason Hawkins, Managing Director of Choice Voting
How does the software allow anonymous elections while blocking ineligible votes?
The technology behind the software is explained below.
“Ensuring that only eligible voters may take part in an election is a standard that would be expected from election-specific software. We have addressed this concern in multiple ways.
“Our voters may only vote once, and at the point of voting their voting rights are ‘locked in’ and ballots cannot be changed, therefore another person may not share or use existing login credentials. We have additional safeguards that mean the voters don’t actually know login credentials to share.
“Each voter is given a unique key and ID combination. This is then encrypted and paired to a certificate in our software. When voters receive an invitation to vote they will be presented with a “vote now” button. This button also has a key pair attached to it and a combination of checks ensure that this keychain has not been altered in anyway.
“Voting is anonymous. An election administrator will never know who made which selection during the submission of a ballot. An administrator will however have a real-time audit feature that allows them to see as live voting statistics on the performance of the election, including the ability to guide and help those that haven’t yet voted.”
Jason Hawkins, Managing Director of Choice Voting
Do schools need to hand over email addresses? What about GDPR?
If schools are planning to run the election using email addresses they must make sure that the parents or staff know their data will be used in this way (although that’s less of a problem if your staff use school email addresses of course). A data sharing agreement can also be used.
“There are a number of ways to look at this. Choice Voting can send out personalised invitation emails to all parents that inform them how to vote, what the vote is about and when the vote is available. It will use the key pairing described above.
“However, we do not ever insist that you add a parent’s email address, or a real name; it could be a reference number for example. The caveat here is that if you don’t include an email address then we are unable to send the notification to vote email. We do though provide you with the required information to enable you to send this using your own systems if required.
“We will request that you have informed and gained consent from parents to include them in the election. We do not use any voter or candidate data for marketing purposes, sell or re-use data or make use of any data for purposes other than informing a voter how to vote at the start of your elections.
“You may download an encrypted copy of your election, delete everything, and if you need to run a similar election in the future, upload the encrypted file and everything is put back in place in the same way you left it. We have data sharing agreements that we are happy to sign and share with schools where required.”
Jason Hawkins, Managing Director of Choice Voting
Jason Hawkins also told me that personal data is encrypted and once an election is over the school can delete specific data (eg: all voter data) or delete the election completely.