Setting up ballot weighting for your ballot or voting
It is easy to weight ballots individually
- Individualize elections and voting
- Assign ballot weights individually
- Get weighted results
Note: The following describes the procedure for Live Voting. The “Ballot Weighting” feature will also be available for online voting from spring 2021; the setup will be done in the same way.
Elections and voting are often conducted with ballot weighting. What this means is that eligible voters have different numbers of votes, possibly because this is specified in the articles of association, or due to a transfer of voting rights.
Ballot weighting can also be set up for online voting and elections. To do this, log in to the POLYAS Online Voting Manager and go to the “Features” tab. This is where you book the “Ballot Weighting” feature. Here you decide whether to output the weighted results of the voting only, or whether to provide the weighted and unweighted results.
If this feature is booked, click on the “Eligible voters” tab and then on the gear icon. Now click on “Attributes”, select the “Ballot Weighting” attribute from the drop-down menu and click “Add”. Use the column in your register to specify the factor used for weighting the individual vote of eligible voters.
Example: Due to the transfer of voting rights, Samantha Sample is the representative for four other voters. Enter a five into the “Ballot Weighting” column.
Alternatively, you can set up the ballot weighting by means of an Excel upload. In the Excel spreadsheet for your register of eligible voters, add a column labeled “Ballot Weight” and enter the ballot weights there. Learn more about uploading the register in Excel format here.
If you booked the feature with both the weighted and unweighted results, before you start the voting the Live Voting Cockpit allows you to decide again which type of analysis you would prefer.
Once you have started the voting with the POLYAS Live Voting Cockpit, voters are shown the factor used to weight their ballot.
You can download the results of voting with ballot weighting directly from the Live Voting Cockpit.
If you have booked the “Ballot Weighting” features, you must now add the corresponding attribute to your resgister.