Ask HN: How to run a remote election for a society?
Here are some constraints: - I expect 30 to 70 voters - The voters aren't technically savvy - Ideally, the voting is anonymous - As the results are binding, the election needs to have integrity - People should be able to only cast one vote per election - There will be multiple elections, one after another, for different positions (ex. President, Vice President, Treasurer, Board Member). - We will take nominations "from the floor", meaning the people on the ballot are not known beforehand. - We need the results right away (a few minutes after the vote starts, at most), as it doesn't make sense to run for Vice President if you were just elected President - While most of the elections are to vote in a single person, with each voter voting for a single nominee, when it is time to vote for the board, each voter can voter for several people. - If using a web-connected device, it is possible that two members may be sharing the same device.
While I love open-source software, I'm not opposed to something proprietary. There is a budget (although probably fairly small) to make this happen.
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Some possibilities I can see: - I understand you can have a meeting in Zoom, create a break-out room for everyone authorized to vote, and then run a poll. I think this would work reasonably well, except for spouses who are sharing a device for the call. - Possibly, we could have a number of people running the election, and have a list of all the eligible voters. Each person could phone, text, or perhaps e-mail in their vote; we cross them off, and record the vote. Time consuming, and not fully anonymous, but possibly do-able. - There does appear to be some software for this. I'm looking into it, hoping something will work and not break the budget. Some of it is not geared to this sort of audience at all.