Unions have long been essential in advocating for workers rights. But for a union to be effective, its members need to be engaged in the decision-making process. Understanding what a union is and how they work is essential to understand the importance of online elections for unions.
What is a union?
A union is an organized group of workers who join together to protect and advance their collective interests such as attaining better wages and benefits, improving working conditions etc. Unionized workers have the ability to negotiate from a position of strength to amplify their voice and ensure their rights are respected.
Unions are democratic organizations therefore elections are extremely important, whether to elect leadership, approve contracts or make decisions on strikes on a national, provincial and local level.
In most cases these elections are secret and majority votes. Traditionally, these votes are conducted in person, at polling stations, using paper ballots during meetings.
However, these methods, often excludes a large portion of the membership due to various reasons: schedule conflicts, geographical distance or even health issues that can make in difficult to attend elections in person.
Online voting offers a simple and affordable solution to these challenges.
- Increased participation
Online voting allows members to vote from anywhere at any time. This flexibly allows more members to take part in the voting process, helping reach quorum more easily and making the unions decision truly representative of the entire membership. That way, important decisions can be made with a lower risk of a low turnout and procedural delays.
- Cost and time efficient
Traditional voting methods require time consuming preparation such as organizing meeting and polling stations as well as printing and counting ballots. Online voting eliminates all those steps and therefore reduces administrative cost and time and well as the possibility of human error in the process. It also offers quick, real-time results which accelerates the decision-making process.
- Security and transparency
Online voting offers strong security features, ensuring that every vote is protected and counted accurately. Each action made throughout the election process is tracked and saved in an auditable log ensuring transparency throughout the process along with trusted, legitimate results helping build trust among the union members.
Hybrid elections
While online voting offers great benefits, we also offer other options that can be combined with online voting still increasing participation and security as well as reducing cost.
- Mail-in paper ballots
In addition, to online voting it is also possible to offer electors the possibility to mail-in ballots. Simply voting will print and mail out letters with personalized voting instructions for online or mail-in ballot voting along with a return envelope and accurately process mailed-in ballots in-house
- In person paper ballots
If you wish to continue in-person paper ballot voting along with online voting, we also offer a voter strike-off feature to block paper ballot voters from online voting, in real-time. When a paper ballot is provided, the election official will mark the elector as voted offline so they can no longer vote online. The paper ballots will be counted independently of the online voting system according to the union’s procedures.
- Kiosk voting
It is possible to continue having polling stations along with online voting using our kiosk feature. These kiosks allow secure, efficient and low-maintenance voting in person for electors that prefer to vote from a polling station.
For unions looking to increase participation, make voting more accessible and reduce cost, online voting is the next step. Whether you opt for online voting only or a hybrid solution, Simply Voting will make your election process more accessible, transparent and secured.
Ready to make the switch to online voting?
