Board Voting Procedure in Professional Associations

Electing your board of directors is a task that must be carried out with the utmost care. It is no secret that planning a board election can be a challenge, especially as the deadline draws near. From the planning stages and updating the electoral roll and sending out ballot papers, there are considerable costs and a significant amount of work to be done. 

Here we go over the core aspects of a board of directors election in a professional association and how switching to online voting can save you money and effort.

Common Election procedures

The precise election process within your professional association will depend entirely on the guidelines established within your bylaws. There are however common features that all professional associations share. These include:

• Regular elections
  • While term lengths may be staggered, meaning yearly elections all professional associations are required to have their board of directors directly elected from the membership.
• One Member, One Vote
  • Regardless of who the member or how much they have contributed to their field, they will receive just one vote. This ensures that all member have an equal say in amending bylaws and in particular voting in new board members.
• One Candidate, One Vote
  • If there are three positions on the board of directors that are up for election, each member will receive one vote per candidate, meaning that they can vote for multiple positions. Alternatively, three separate ballot papers will be shown to the voter and they will have one vote per ballot.
  • This depends largely on if candidates are applying for a general directorship role, or for a specific position such as president or treasurer. 
• Majority Voting
  • Professional associations all use majority voting, meaning that the candidate who wins the most votes, wins the position. 

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Planning your Board of Directors Election

There are a few steps that every election manager should be aware of before they embark on trying to manage a ​​board of directors election for an entire professional association. While elections are regular, the board itself often delegates tasks to ensure a successful election. This means that when a board member is up for election or has completed their term limit, the board must choose another member to oversee the election. 

1. Determine which positions are open
2. Collect prospective candidates and approve them to become candidates
3. Announce the election
4. Update the electoral roll
5. Create Ballot papers & send out test elections (if online)
6. Open the election period
7. Count the ballots & announce the results

Based on the idea of simplifying complex processes with digitalization, we have a full list of services and features to help you manage your next board of directors election.

The Highest Security Standards

The basic security requirements for online voting products are guided by general democratic principles (free, equal, secret, general and direct). Accordingly, online elections carried out with POLYAS CORE 2.5.0 are secure under BSI requirements  and meet the high security standards demanded by democratic elections.

• It is impossible to trace the identity of the voter back to their cast vote
• Voters cannot share their decision with third parties
• The electorate are reliably identified, ensuring that only those who are registered to vote may do so.
• Voters may only cast the number of votes they have been allocated.
• Votes cannot be changed, deleted or added during their transfer through the network.
• Votes in the ballot box cannot be changed, deleted or added
• Interim inputs are not counted.

​We are constantly investing in our IT infrastructure especially surrounding advance cryptography techniques.