Help Page - Management

Contents

  1. Create an Account
  2. Sessions and Elections
  3. Advanced Features

This is the management documentation. In case you are a voter and just want to know how to participate in a vote please consider the voter help page.

Create an Account

If you are a member of StuStaNet you are free to create an account for Wahlfang. The following steps will guide you to create your own account:

  1. Get your membership card at our office hours
  2. On the membership card is a number and a password which you can use to login on accounts.stusta.de.
  3. Go to "Services", click the checkbox for "wahlfang (online voting tool)" and click the reset button.
  4. Remember the password and username which should be firstname.lastname
  5. Then you might need to wait a few minutes until your account gets activated
Now, you can go to the management login page and use your credentials to login.

Sessions and Elections

Our system is structured into voting sessions which have several elections and the same set of voters. A common case for this setup is given during organizational meetings like Heimräte where members decide about new offices or spendings of the organization. Voters are usually invited to sessions via email but can also be invited via mail with a QR-code or with a token.

Session

Thus, the first thing is to create a new Session. The session can have a name, a starting date and a meeting URL. The starting date and meeting URL will be display in the invitation. Furthermore, the meeting URL will be displayed for the voters in the election view. The session setting can also be changed later on.

Election

After a session has been created one can start adding elections. However, if they are not known beforehand it possible to add a new election at any point. An election can have a name a start time an end time and a maximal number of yes votes. Start and end time are both optional. An election can be started/stopped at any time before the actual given times. If no end time is given the default election length is 5 minutes. The maximal number of yes votes is also optional. If no number is given the participants can vote yes for every option/candidate.

Once an election is created, one can click on the election to add options/applicants for the election. This view also allows to start and stop the election. When the election is over due to the time limit or has been stopped manually the results can be published to the voters.

Voters

One can add voters to the election on the session's view. There are three ways to add voters:

  1. Via E-Mail invitation: Gather all emails and paste them into the "Add Voters" page one by one
  2. Via CSV: Similar to email but can be used to add a lot more participants. This method also allows to specify the voters name for a personal invitation
  3. Via Token: Just add the number of voters where you do not have an email and click "Download Tokens" on the hamburger menu. This will create a pdf file that you can print out or send the code via messenger.

Furthermore, it is possible to create a spectator link for all people who are not allowed to cast a vote themselves but still want to observe the election's outcome. To create a public link to a side that just displays the published results (voters can also only see the results once they are published) go to the upper hamburger menu in the session's view and click "Public Spectator Link". You can now create a link (to which you can also remove the access later on) and distribute it.

Advanced Features

The creation pages of sessions and elections have a drop down menu for advanced options which will be explained in this section

Sessions

In the advanced options of the creation of a session (and also in the edit page) it is possible to customize the invite text which is sent to the voters. The table shows variables which can be used like the meeting url. Variables shall be used in python format string snytax in the text e.g. {variable_name}. Once finished a test email can be send to your email address to check if all variables render correctly.

Elections

When creating an election you can also specify if abstention votes should be disabled. Furthermore, you can allow voters to apply themselves. In this way they dont need to be added maually which is useful for elections where applicants can apply during the meeting. Furthermore, it is also possible to send a reminder email when the election starts. This, however, is only really useful when the election starts several days after the invitation e.g. because people are welcomed to apply for the election. As for sessions it is again possible to customize this remind email with the same syntax explained above.