How to Manage Digital Elections with NemoVote: A Step-by-Step Guide

Whether you’re managing elections for an organization, company, or NGO, NemoVote provides all the tools you need to conduct the process quickly, securely, and hassle-free. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to set up a vote from start to finish in just a few minutes. This guide is based on our latest YouTube tutorial, which helps you make the most of NemoVote.

▶️ Watch the full tutorial video to follow along with all the steps: 

1. Creating and Configuring a New Vote

In general, there are three election statuses that can be found on the admin page:

• Prepared Votes: These are created but not yet live. You can make changes here before going live.
• Open Votes: The vote is live, and voters can cast their ballots.
• Closed Votes: After the voting period ends, voters can no longer participate, but you can still access the results.

The first step is to create a new vote. Simply go to the Admin area and click on Create Vote. Assign a name for the vote, add a description if needed.

Example: If you are voting for different candidates, you can add the candidate profile here, including pictures and links to their CV. 

2. Adding and Editing Voting Questions

The design of your voting questions is key to a smooth election process. With NemoVote, you can choose from various answer types like a motion with In Favor, Against, Abstain  or multiple choice. For Yes/No questions, the “Make it a motion” feature automatically translates the text into the voter’s language – a helpful tool for improving accessibility especially for online voting in international organisations and NGOs.

Make sure your questions are clear and easy to understand so that your voters can cast their ballots easily.

3. Managing Election Settings

The election settings are the heart of vote management. Here, you can adjust several options to ensure the vote meets your needs:

• Result Access: Decide who can view the results—usually, this is limited to administrators. Additionally, you can enable voters to view the results in their NemoVote account.
• Voter Participation: Track who of the voters have cast their ballots to set reminders and increase voter engagement.
• Secret or Open Voting: Choose whether votes are anonymous or public. If your past elections have been on-sight and you voted with hand signs, your next online vote should be public. If you cast your votes secretly in the past, you can do that with NemoVote as well. More on our security features can be found here.
• Vote Weighting: If you have different voter groups (e.g. Online Election at a University with Students and Employees), you can assign different weights to their votes and enable Proxy Voting.
• Live Results: Set whether results are visible immediately or only at the end of the voting period.
• Managing Voting Rights Flexibility: Decide whether voting rights can be modified after the election has started, for example, to include forgotten voters
• Time Settings: Automatically adjust the closing of the vote based on your time zone. If you plan to host a live election, you should set a "No" here and close it manually instead.

4. Managing Voting Rights and Voter Lists

Under “Voting Rights,” you control who is allowed to participate. You can either add all voters by checking the box or upload sub groups in a Voter List. Voter Lists can be added in the menu on the left side. The voter list function allows you to define specific groups, such as “Students” or “Employees,” and set permissions accordingly. Our Knowledge-Base article covers how to set up a voter list.

5. Opening the Online Election and Live Tracking

Once everything is set up, you can open the vote. You have the option to notify all voters by email, making it even easier for them to access the vote. During the vote, you can track progress live and see how many voters have already participated. The “Projector Mode” feature even allows you to share this live progress with voters.

6. Closing the digital Vote and Viewing Results

Once the voting period is over, the vote will close automatically, or you can close it manually. You can view the results in the Admin area and filter them by different criteria. Results can also be exported as CSV (coming late 2024) or PDF files—ideal for reports and further analysis.

7. Security and Anonymity with NemoVote

NemoVote places a strong emphasis on security and anonymity. The platform uses separate databases to ensure that votes remain anonymous. It has also been tested by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), ensuring the highest security standards. All our Security Features can be found on our website NemoVote Election Security.

Conclusion and Next Steps

As you can see, setting up and managing an election with NemoVote is straightforward, secure, and transparent— and all in less than 4 minutes! If you want to dive deeper into the process, be sure to watch our full tutorial video for a step-by-step walkthrough.