Cumulative Voting: Empowering Shareholders in the Election Process

Cumulative voting is a type of voting system that allows electors to allocate their votes in a flexible manner during an election. Voters are given a certain number of votes to allocate for a specific position, they can then distribute these votes among the candidates however they’d like.

This method can be particularly useful for corporate elections where shareholders are voting.

Let’s see how cumulative voting operates, how results are calculated and why it’s an ideal system to enhance shareholder representation.

What is cumulative voting?

Unlike traditional voting methods where each voter casts one vote per candidate, cumulative voting allows voters to assign a given number of votes (or points) across various candidates in an election. The number of votes is based on the shareholding of the elector.

For example, if a shareholder owns 12 shares, they would be granted 12 votes to distribute as they see fit. If there are 5 candidates, that elector can choose to:

  • Assign all 12 votes to 1 candidate
  • Allocate votes in any combination that’s fits their preference.

This flexibility ensure that shareholders can strategically support candidates who aligns with the values and goals.

The election organizer can decide whether voters must allocate all of their votes of if they can choose to allocate fewer votes than the total amount allowed.

Cumulative Voting: Empowering Shareholders

Calculating results in Cumulative Voting

Once all the votes are cast, the next step is to calculate the results. Here is how it works:

  • One seat election: After votes are cast, a vote counting algorithm tallies to total number of votes allocated to each candidate. The candidate with the most votes wins.
  • Multi-seat election: In the case where multiple positions are up for election (such as electing several board members), the candidate with the highest percentage of vote will win the first seat, the second highest percentage will win the second seat and so on until all the positions are filed.

Why should you use Cumulative Voting for your shareholder election?

There are several advantages to using cumulative voting for shareholders elections:

  • Increased influence of minority shareholders

Cumulative voting particularity benefits minority shareholders by allowing them to concentrate their votes on one candidate, increasing their influence despite owning fewer shares. If multiple minority shareholders allocate all their votes to the same candidate together, it gives them more power to influence the outcome of the vote.

Because of this increased influence, minority shareholders are more likely to engage in the voting process and feel like their votes matter. This leads to better participation and a stronger sense of ownership.

  • More flexible voting

Voters have more control over how they allocate their votes. They can support a single candidate of spread their votes across multiple candidates. This flexibly allows more thoughtful voting and better representation.

How to run a cumulative election?

If you have looking to implement cumulative voting for your next election, Simply Voting offers and easy to use platform that allows cumulative voting and ensures security and transparency throughout the process.

To learn more about how cumulative voting works and how to setup your election, check-out our step-by step guide.

Get started with cumulative voting today, create your free online voting tool here!

5 Things You Might Not Think of When Preparing for Online Voting

In the world of elections, online voting stands out as a convenient and efficient option for various organizations, including homeowners’ associations, unions, sport clubs, political parties and corporate entities. Ensuring a smooth and fair online voting process requires careful planning and consideration of several essential factors. Here’s 5 things you may overlook when preparing for online voting:

1. Check Your Bylaws and Regulations

Before diving into online voting, it’s crucial to review your organization’s bylaws. These often outline specific requirements for conducting elections, including rules on voting procedures and eligibility criteria. Additionally, consider if there are any regulatory bodies or governmental entities that prescribe rules for elections in your jurisdiction. Adhering to these guidelines ensures your election is legal and trusted by everyone.

2. Educate Stakeholders to Online Voting

Introducing online voting requires buy-in from all stakeholders. Educating members, shareholders, or residents about the process and its benefits can avoid concerns and build confidence in the system. Clearly communicate how the online voting platform works, the security measures in place, and the timeline for the election. 

3. Plan Voter Assistance

Not everyone may be familiar with online platforms or comfortable navigating digital interfaces. Planning for voter assistance is essential to ensure inclusivity and accessibility. Consider offering technical support for those who may encounter difficulties when casting their vote online. Providing clear instructions and troubleshooting tips can enhance the voting experience for all participants.

Additionally, maintaining clean and up-to-date voter records is crucial in minimizing potential issues. Ensuring accurate data helps prevent access difficulties, reduces errors, and streamlines the voting process for a smoother experience overall.

4. Define Ballot Details

The ballot itself is at the heart of any election. Decide upfront on key details such as:

  • Abstention: Will voters have the option to abstain from voting on certain issues?
  • Required Documents: Will you need to include any documentation to the ballot?
  • Candidate Information: Will you include pictures, biographies, or other details alongside candidates’ names to help voters make informed decisions?

Clarity on these aspects ensures transparency and helps maintain the integrity of the election process.

Don’t hesitate to check our help guide to help you setup your ballot.

5. Time Dedication and Setup

Consider how much time and resources your organization can dedicate to setting up and managing the election. Choosing to delegate the management of your election to Simply Voting can free time for your organization to focus on what matters most, while also reducing stress regarding the voting process.

CONTACT OUR TEAM FOR MORE INFORMATION

Make Voting Simple: Our New Voting Website is Live!

We are excited to announce the launch of our redesigned voting website starting December 16th 2024 for most accounts and continuing throughout the first months of 2025 for accounts with premium features, customized voting websites and clients that are in the middle of an election process.

As we are committed to always improving the voter experience, this new design offers a clean, modern look that is both visually appealing and user-friendly. Fully optimized for all devices, it ensures a seamless experience whether electors are browsing on a desktop, tablet or smartphone.

Key Features and Improvements

Enhanced Accessibility

This refreshed layout aims to inspire confidence, improve usability and offer a smooth effortless experience. With a strong focus on accessibility, the site is designed to be inclusive for all users, providing easy navigation and clear content.

User-Friendly Design

The new voting website incorporates:

  • A responsive design that adapts to different devices
  • Intuitive navigation for a smoother user experience
  • Simplified content presentation

The new website now includes a progress indicator, a feature designed to reduce abandoned ballots by guiding voters through the process.

Overall, the redesign enhances both the aesthetic and functional elements of the website, streamlining the voting process for electors and ultimately fostering increased participation. By creating a more intuitive and visually appealing interface, we aim to empower voters and make their experience as seamless as possible.

Feedback and Continuous Improvement

We value your input and are committed to continually enhancing your voting experience. We’ll be gathering research and feedback from users to make further improvements.

Explore your new voting website now!

Introducing a New Feature: Un-finalization

Simply Voting is committed to provide an easy and flexible election manager to allow all election organisers to set up smooth stress free elections. With the objective of always improving our services and offer, we are happy to announce the launch of a new feature: Un-finalization.

We understand that finalizing your election can be stressful as last-minute changes might come up. Whether it is to accommodate a last-minute candidate, to fix a typo or to modify your electors list. Flexibility is the key to ensuring the integrity and efficiency of the voting process.

That is why we are introducing the new feature: “un-finalization”, which allows you to call-off your finalization in order to make the necessary changes to your election. Once the changes are made, you will be able to re-finalize the election at no additional cost if you still have the same number of electors. If you added electors, you will be offered to pay for an upgrade.

To learn more about this new functionality and how to use it, please visit our help guide or visit our help portal

With this new functionality, managing your elections becomes easier, more efficient and more stress free than ever.

Simply Voting remains committed to enhancing its platform with tools that support seamless election management. The new un-finalization feature is part of our ongoing efforts to provide election organizers with maximum control and adaptability throughout the process.

This update reflects our dedication to listening to client needs and addressing the challenges that come with managing elections. We understand the importance of delivering a reliable system that empowers organizers to handle their elections with confidence. As we continue to innovate, we remain focused on making elections easier, more efficient, and stress-free for all.

Setting User Permissions with Roles

Finding ways to enhance customer experience is always a driving force at Simply Voting, and because of this we are pleased to announce our new Roles feature for streamlining user permissions.

Accounts on Simply Voting often have multiple organizational users, since managing elections sometimes isn’t just a one person job, or other stakeholders might be involved in helping keep elections transparent and auditable. If you are still sharing a single user login among organizational staff – we would encourage you to review best practices and create individual users (click here to learn more)!

To facilitate managing multiple users, we’ve launched roles. Roles provide a set of permissions which can be applied to multiple users, and to get you started you will find several default roles reflecting popular groups of user permissions.

Customers also have the option to create their own more nuanced roles (click here to learn more). For instance, a “scrutineer” role might have permissions related to read-only access to the Electors, Results, and Reports sections, but no access to any other sections within an election.

Any edits to the defined permissions for custom roles like this, such as say updating the scrutineer role to also include full access to the Account Log section, would then update the permissions of all users assigned to this role – saving you the headache of updating each user one by one and ensuring everything is the same across the board for the group of users.

We hope this feature enhancement helps keep your user management simple! Don’t hesitate to contact Support if you have any issues, questions, or concerns.

Protecting Your User Account: Two-Factor Authentication

In today’s world, data security is paramount. Protecting your organization’s data wherever it may be is a critical element of any organization’s security practices and policies. And when it comes to voting events and elections run on Simply Voting, security goes hand-in-hand with election integrity.

What is Two-Factor Authentication?

Two-factor authentication (2FA), put simply, is an added layer of security that can be enabled by users on your organization’s account. Two-factor is shown to significantly decrease the risk of an account breach by combining two forms of protection — something ideally only you should know (e.g. your username and password) with something only you have available (e.g. your mobile device). Simply Voting supports two-factor authentication through any number of reliable authenticator applications.

Enabling Two-Factor Authentication on your User Account

The handy Election Manager Guide’s Account Management section covers how to enable and disable two-factor authentication. To enable it, you’ll need your mobile device. Then Simply log into your account as you normally would, and proceed to the Security section of your account. Locate the Two-Factor Authentication section and follow the instructions provided. Once completed, you will see a notice that your account is protected.

Logging into the Election Manager with Two-Factor Authentication

When you attempt to log into the Election Manager tool, you’ll use your username and password just like before. After that step, you’ll also be prompted to complete a secondary login element related to two-factor authentication, as shown in the screenshot below and in this FAQ item in our Help section.

Security Check-up

Finally, while in the Security section, take a moment do a security check-up on your password as well. Are you using it with any other website? Is it sufficiently secure? Are your security questions up-to-date? When in doubt, take those extra steps to help protect both your account and the integrity of your voting events and elections on Simply Voting.

 

Redesigned Election Manager

Simply Voting has launched a Redesigned Election Manager for the Voting System. From the start, we set out to craft a modern and intuitive customer experience, without sacrificing the core principle that drives us as a company — simplicity. It was clear our Voting System’s design, while lovingly crafted many years ago, needed an overhaul to match the diverse needs of our customers and to bring it up-to-date with a contemporary approach to end user experience.

With the redesign, users will find the Election Manager more visually informing, as well as more responsive on mobile devices so they can manage their election on the go. While the redesign’s refined aesthetic enhancements are important, the functionality of the user interface remains unchanged – there is no feature loss.

So what does the Election Manager look like now? Lets take a brief tour!

Account Navigation and Settings

Upon logging in, as before you begin on the Elections page, with a listing of all your elections. In the screenshot below, highlighted in yellow, is your main navigation menu within your account — analogous to the same navigation menu that was previously across the top of the Elections page. From this menu, you will find additional pages for managing account Users, account Settings, as well as your own User Profile and Security, and a way to return to the main Elections page.

With a deeper look into the Settings page, again highlighted in yellow, you’ll find familiar pages that cover your Organizational Details, Billing history, Voting Website design, and the overall Account Log. Other sections from the “old” Settings page exist here too.

Election Management

While managing your elections might look a bit different, again the underlying structure and wording remains unchanged to help ensure users won’t find themselves lost. Throughout the Election Manager, now users will find tool-tipped buttons to help guide them along the way in various Action columns, mimicking the “old” action links. In the screenshot below, we’re heading into an election to further manage it.

Once inside an election users will find a navigation menu, as shown in the screenshot below and highlighted in yellow, that mimics the “old” dropdown navigation menu. Again the order and wording remains unchanged to help ensure users can navigate with ease. Plus, within any draft election you’ll find the handy Election Checklist to help keep you on task.

Help!

If you are feeling a little overwhelmed, don’t worry! As you may have noticed, in the right corner of screen you’ll always find a little Help button following you around, on any page within the Election Manager. Clicking Help will bring you to our expansive suite of Guides that can walk you through anything step-by-step. Our Help documentation has been updated to match the user interface experience, so keep it handy as a resource.

And if you need more support or have additional questions, our Support Team is always standing by!

Final Thoughts

We hope our redesign meets your expectations and approval. We’ve listened to our customers and outside experts to deliver a more intuitive experience. However at Simply Voting, development never stops — and we can look forward to continued improvements to the new interface over time.

Supporting Multiple Users

Today Simply Voting is launching a feature to enhance customer experience: The ability for all accounts to have multiple users. Each with their own unique logins, and the ability to configure fine-grained permissions for a variety of electoral requirements.

Below you can find information about how this migration to multiple users works. If you are a customer that has never had multiple users before, as well as how things work going forward if you are a customer who used the legacy multiple administrators feature.

Also as part of this update, accounts are now required to have an “owner” user, and the Election Manager’s “Settings” page has been refined.

 

Customers New to Multiple Users

Customers who are new to multiple users still initiate login to the Election Manager tool as before. By clicking the login link located in the upper right corner of the www.simplyvoting.com webpage:

Once you’ve reached the Election Manager’s login page, provide your Voting Website in the input field and click the Login:

As part of the migration to multiple users, this first time you attempt to login you will be prompted to choose a memorable username that will be uniquely yours.

If you also plan on creating additional users later, it may be prudent to decide on a consistent format for usernames. Examples described in the instructions on the page shown below, though a consistent format isn’t strictly necessary either.

In the end, as long as whatever you end up choosing is memorable and makes sense for your organization and its use case, that is all that matters!

Type your current password into the appropriate field, and then type your desired username into the other field. Click the Submit button when ready.

After submission, you will receive a Green Success Message. This message will confirm that you’ve successfully migrated your Simply Voting account to allowing multiple users going forward.

You can now login with your new username and current password going forward. You can also bookmark this URL with your Voting Website already filled out, if you would like to quickly return to it in the future.

To login in the future at www.simplyvoting.com, users will always need to know their:

  • Voting Website for the first login step
  • Username
  • Password for the second login step

Click here to review the newly updated Account Management section of the Election Manager Guide to review information about how to use this newly integrated user management feature.

We hope this update adds greater security and auditability to your account management, while also empowering your organization’s election management. Don’t hesitate to contact Support if you have any issues, questions, or concerns.

 

Customers Who Used the Legacy Multiple Administrators Feature

For customers who previously used the legacy multiple administrators feature, instead of bookmarking and using a special Election Manager login page. Now you will simply navigate to www.simplyvoting.com and click the Login link in the upper right corner.

Once you’ve reached the Election Manager’s login page, provide your Voting Website in the input field and click the Login button.

You will be prompted to type your existing Username and your existing Password and click the Login button. You can bookmark this URL if you would like to quickly return to it in the future as well.

If you need a refresher on managing multiple users, click here to review the newly updated Account Management section.

Don’t hesitate to contact Support if you have any issues, questions, or concerns.

 

Owner User

Every Simply Voting account is required to have an “owner” user. Ownership can be transferred by an owner to another user should it be necessary to do so. Identifying owners ensures we have a primary contact for your account. Click here to review more information about an owner user, and how to transfer ownership to another user in your account.

 

Settings Page Refinement Inside the Election Manager Tool

The Settings page within the Election Manager tool has also underwent refinement. Click here to review the Election Manager Guide’s section on the Settings page.

 

Voting in Hindi, Finnish, and Swedish

Voting in Hindi Finnish and Swedish is now possible. A core aspect of our mission at Simply Voting has been to ensure that the voter interface is accessible — whether that accessibility comes in the form of technology compatible with screen-readers for visually impaired voters, or in supporting internet browser versions released a decade ago for those voters still using older devices, etc. And plainly, the language in which voters interact with the Voting System can be a key component to an organization’s own mission to help ensure voter enfranchisement.

To this end, Simply Voting has pleased to announce additional language support options for any organization’s voting website and ballot. This brings our total to 17 supported language options for the voter interface, with new languages being voting in Hindi Finnish and Swedish:

  • English
  • French
  • Italian
  • German
  • Spanish
  • Russian
  • Portuguese
  • Dutch
  • Finnish
  • Swedish
  • Simplified Chinese
  • Traditional Chinese
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Hindi
  • Arabic
  • Hebrew

To this end, Simply Voting is pleased to announce expanded language support options for any organization’s voting website and ballot. With the addition of Hindi, Finnish, and Swedish, we now offer a total of 17 supported languages for the voter interface. This enhancement ensures that more voters can interact with the voting system in their native language, promoting inclusivity and accessibility. By enabling organizations to provide multilingual voting options, we help them better serve their diverse voter communities, fostering greater participation and engagement in the democratic process.

To learn more about how to activate multi-language support for your elections, please visit our Help section.

Advanced DDoS Protection Service

Simply Voting recently launched an Advanced DDoS Protection Service, which involved coordination between Radware, a specialized DoS protection company, and Terago, our hosting provider.

Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks are on the rise and have evolved into complex and overwhelming security challenges for organizations large and small. Although DoS attacks are not a recent phenomenon, the methods and resources available to conduct and mask such attacks have dramatically evolved to include distributed (DDoS) and, more recently, distributed reflector (DRDoS) attacks.

Radware’s DDoS protection service monitors all traffic entering its network for large-volume floods that aim to disrupt the services. Features of this best-in-class protection include behavioral-based detection using advanced, patented machine learning algorithms to protect against known and unknown threats; protection against network and application-layer DDoS attacks, protection against encrypted flood attacks without requiring customers to provide decryption keys and without adding latency in peacetime, as well as extensive compliance options and certifications, unparalleled by any rival, including industry-specific certifications such as PCI and HIPAA, as well as cloud security standards such as SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, ISO 27032, etc.

Simply Voting enjoys the protection of an always-on solution that combines Radware’s DefensePro attack mitigation appliances with their Cloud DDoS Protection Service. The DefensePro locally filters all traffic entering Simply Voting’s private cloud infrastructure hosted at Terago data centres. If additional mitigation capacity is needed the DefensePro automatically triggers a redirection of traffic to Radware’s cloud-based scrubbing centres. This hybrid solution leverages the real-time protection and minimal latency of an on-premise solution with the massive capacity of a cloud service that is activated on demand.