Voting Best Practices

There are many ways to run a voting session with the District Toolbox. Here is our recomendation in preperation and execution of a succesful voting session.

Preparation Check List

• Ensure WiFi connectivity in the venue is up to par (high-density routers with sufficient bandwidth and access points)

• Select a Check-in Lead and team to run check-in

If you don't want to do check-in through the app to communciate the Voter ID, a great trick is to export the excel file from Manage Delegates and do a mail merge with Word to generate printed name tags with the Voter ID on them.

• Have an App Support team ready to go to assist with password resets, account creations, downloading the app, and more

• Prepare your Pastors and delegates ahead of time to ensure they have a plan of how they will access their handbook, what device they will vote with, they have the app downloaded ahead of time, and more.

• Do a practice vote ahead of time with an access code. Send out an email and encourage delegates to give it a try.

• Set-up a practice ballot at the start of Assembly. This works out all the kinks before it matters.

• Set-up a training with your check-in team, voting team, and App Specialists and our Toolbox Team to make sure everyone is ready to go.

• Let your District Toolbox Support Team know when you are planning to Vote so we can be "on-call" to help as needed.

Still not sure if you are ready? Let us help make your electronic voting a success. A Toolbox Support Team Member may be available to be onsite to help with all your Assembly needs. Contact us today!

You will be asked to cover transportation and accomidations as well as a honorarium.

The Ideal Voting Session

We highly recommend having all ballots open for an extended period of time. This helps you navigate multiple obstacles that may come up. By spreading the voting out over a period of time, this will prevent your network from bottlenecking and give people time to get assistance if needed to submit their vote.

Example Voting Session Schedule

8:00 am - Check-in & Registration

9:00 am - Assembly brought to order

9:15 am - Approval of Ballots

9:30 am - Ballots are live

9:30-11:30 am - Assembly Business

11:30-1 pm - Lunch

1:15pm - Ballots Close

1:30 pm - Results are announced

A Real-Time Voting Session

In the event voting in real-time is prefered, we recommend a few things

• Do a test ballot at the beginning of Assembly (highly recommended for this method).

• Place a report or video during the voting period. Open a ballot, share a report or video while voting is happening, close the ballot after the report or video.

• Do not ask people to raise their hand if they are having issues - instead set-up a "tech-help" station they can go to recieve assistance.

• Encourage people to ask their neighbor if they are having trouble.

• Decide on your "number" based on the first vote and checked-in delegates to know when you have received enough votes. It is rare to have all checked-in delegates vote on a ballot in general.

• Have a back-up plan in case the WiFi or server crashes because of the load. Move on and contact support immediately.

• Be patient - the system will work if you give it time

• If somone is not sure if their vote was submitted, have them try and vote again. The system will show an error message if they have arleady cast their ballot.

In the event things seem to not be loading or if you have a large delegation, it can be helpful to break up your deleates into sections and vote section by section to lessen the load on the server.