We are excited to announce that Simply Voting has officially become an approved vendor for IAFF elections. This partnership marks a new milestone in our commitment to provide transparent, secured and accessible elections for unions.
About IAFF:
The IAFF (International Association of Fire Fighters) is one of the largest and most influential labor unions in North America. They are advocating for the rights, safety, and future of fire fighters, emergency medical workers, and rescue workers across the United States and Canada.
Compliance with the LMRDA:
The IAFF follows the guidelines outlined by the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, therefore complying with those guidelines is essential to become an approved vendor. This ensures that all vendors meet high standards for quality, security and practices.
The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) establishes democratic standards for conducting regular elections of union officers and elections of delegates who elect officers. The Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), an agency within the Department of Labor, is responsible for enforcing the LMRDA.
Simply Voting complies with the LMRDA’s requirements by:
- Ensuring ballot secrecy and offering the ability to remove any link between a voter and their vote.
- Ensuring that any voting credentials provided to members are not available to others, through union or company websites or in some other manner.
- Employing safeguards that can detect and log efforts to breach the encrypted file and access information about how particular voters voted.
- Using encryption technology meeting industry standards that ensures the integrity of the ballots at all points from when they are cast to decryption and counting and disclosing the use of such encryption technology to observers.
- The opportunity to observe any steps necessary for the counting of the votes, and any other steps necessary to audit that process.
- Maintenance of detailed logs of every transaction and means to ensure the integrity of those logs.
- Periodic audits of the system by an authorized independent party.
- Allowing union members to vote only through a secure portal
- Randomizing the order in which votes are stored in the encrypted file so that the ballot tally reveals no information about the order in which votes were cast.
- Offering the ability to store election records for 1 year or more.
The full guidelines can be found here.
Other types of unions we are serving:
Other unions also trust Simply Voting for their elections whether it is for collective bargaining or leadership votes. Our secured, accessible and customizable online voting system is designed to adapt to your requirements whether you need internet only or hybrid elections. We offer online voting, paper ballots, telephone voting and in person kiosks to make your elections more inclusive and efficient.
Whether you are planning on running a large-scale national vote or a small local one, our flexible online voting tool will meet your needs.
Learn more on how we support unions here.
