Safeguard your Election against attempted Fraudulent Voting!
AV follows and utilizes industry-standard security measures. However, your set-up decisions can expose vulnerability to election fraud, particularity when it come to voter login credentials. Voter fraud on our AV platform has been rare; however, each case was related to the creation of insecure login credentials. Following the below guidelines when creating your login credentials will help you deter fraudulent voters.
Require 2 login credentials. A single voter credential is much easier to guess or manipulate.
Don’t select easily guessable credentials for voter login. If your set up is something like Email and Last Name, unfortunately, there could be a published directory that has this information. You know your members; so ask yourself this question: is the credential something that is well-known to other members, or just known by the individual voter? Your 1st voter credential should uniquely identify the voter, and the second one only the voter knows (and you have in your database) to make it more secure.
If your member records are limited to public profile information such as name, address, email, etc., consider requiring an AV system-generated password as a credential. The password is unique to each voter and limited to a single election.
Want to maximize your fraud-prevention? Utilize AV’s voter verified email service. Members receive a unique, coded URL that requires them to access their email of record to cast their ballot. Using advanced secure encryption signatures, we provide a second layer to confirm your voters’ identification by validating through their email of record with your association.
Tools to Investigate and Squash Fraud Voting!
While the thought of voter fraud can be alarming, AV offers tools to help you quickly investigate any fraud claims and monitor for unexpected activity. So you can squash any potential threats ASAP and retain the integrity of your election. Here are the tools available to hep you investigate fraud:
Voting Receipt: Utilize the AV Voting Receipt email feature. Your voters will raise the red-flag if a confirmation email is received prior to the voter casting a ballot.
Failed Login Tracking: You can see failed login attempts from the Voting Manager administrative portal. Useful for monitoring for potential fraudulent login activity. You can sort and search by IP address and attempted login values to see trends or find details for a specific user credential.
IP Reporting: Check out our IP reporting option to review IP address and Browser agent details regarding each ballot cast. Sort the report by IP address to look for trends.
IP Address Location: You can use an online tool, such as https://www.iplocation.net/ to look up the general location of the IP address. Be careful; you can only get so much public information from an IP address. You cannot always identify someone exactly, and they can be shared or moved by the cable or broadband company.
Support: At any time, you can request help from the Association Voting support staff.
For more details on fraud monitoring and election security, please reach out to us!
We have updated the interface for the uploader to improve tracking of your progress through the upload process. Here’s an example of our new status indicator:
Did I vote for Jamie Smith? I CAST my ballot, right? No more emails or calls regarding ballot selections and cast ballot confirmation. AssociationVoting.com has always provided a Voter Confirmation page and an easy to find PRINT button so your voters can save a copy of the voter receipt. But now we also email the Voter Cast Ballot Receipt directly to the voter’s inbox - alleviating any questions regarding selections and counting. To ensure your voters receive the Voter Cast Ballot receipt via email, simply select Voter Receipt in the election set-up process and include email addresses in the Eligible Voter credential list.
In 2012 with AssociationVoting’s support MAAR tripled the association’s voter turnout as compared to the previous 3 years! 2012 was the first year MAAR utilized online election service from AssociationVoting. AV provided email announcement service with turnout booster for the MAAR Board of Directors election. After each email blast MAAR voter turnout incurred a double digit uptick compared to the period prior to the email blast!
The results speak for themselves — The MAAR voter turnout increased 3 fold to 31% with AssociationVoting!
Please take a moment to look at two new demos which will give you more information about the actual look and feel of an Association Voting hosted election. Our previous review of the Voter Experience shows a typical voting experience for two different online voting members. This demo is located at: https://www.associationvoting.com/election-demos.html
In this video, you will examine a piece of the voting manager area. You can customize the text presented to your voters on the welcome, introduction, ballot, preview, and cast ballot page.
This demonstration is indispensable for the person in your organization who is preparing your election and customizing it for your specific candidates, proposals, voting groups, etc.
In this video, the group-specific ballot personalization functionality is highlighted. You, as voting manager and organizer, can have each member vote for exactly those candidates in his or her region while still running only one general election.
Highlights for this demo include: Enabling group functionality; defining groups; assigning members to groups; limiting specific ballot items to specific member groups; ballot personalization and voter experience.
Once you have taken a moment to consider all of these options that Association Voting can bring to your organization’s election, please request your own Free Trial. To request a Free Trial, click here: https://www.associationvoting.com/demorequest.html
Your organization may be like others that have members who need assistance in making the transition from using a paper ballot to using online voting. Association Voting has developed a hybrid election service to ease the transition to simple, online elections, while providing accurate results that include the data from paper ballot voters.
The Hybrid Election feature allows the manager of your election process to use the Member Personalized Printable Ballot Generator to create an individual PDF of the ballot which can be emailed or to print out a personalized ballot which can be sent by U.S. Mail (or other delivery service) to any member who needs a paper ballot. As a part of the voting process, the individual who needed that paper ballot is blocked from also casting an online vote; this voter cannot accidentally vote twice.
Your organization can collect the paper ballots that have been cast and then mail the completed paper ballots to AV. Association Voting will include your paper ballot counts in the election results summary report! Check for other potential options at the time you order your election from Association Voting.
This is yet another new feature that Association Voting brings to your organization’s election and hopefully assists in making sure that all members can vote. Please request your own Free Trial or order this service by clicking Buy Now:
Your organization’s election is important. Making sure that all members are aware of the election and that they all have a time to vote that is convenient to them are both critical to a successful election. If voting members must attend a meeting in order to vote, or if they have to get a ballot in the mail, complete and then mail it before a deadline in order to vote – you may find that fewer votes are cast than you had hoped.
Association Voting has two elements for increasing voter turnout:
Drive member awareness of the election and
Simplify the voting process.
The following are suggestions your election committee can do and special features for these two processes that are provided by Association Voting.
DRIVE AWARENESS:
Communicate the polling dates to your membership base in advance with Association Voting’s email announcement service.
Post the upcoming voting window on your website’s home page and on your social network. Tweet about your upcoming election!
Announce the upcoming election at meetings and in your monthly newletter.
Craft a “Welcome to Online Voting” email with pertinent information regarding the voting experience like expected time to complete a ballot online and basic process highlights.
Send a “Vote Now” reminder prior to the close of the polls to those members yet to cast a ballot via Association Voting’s email announcement service.
SIMPLIFY YOUR VOTING PROCESS:
Link to your Association Voting online election from your website’s homepage to drive fast access to the election service.
Create a appropriate voting window—long enough to allow everyone the opportunity to vote BUT not so long that it de-motivates voters from voting NOW! Some sense of urgency can drive faster response.
Utilize Association Voting’s online voting service to offer an easy 24x7 voting experience. Cut the delivery time of cast ballots to instantaneous for you and your members!
Voters want a secure, accurate and private voting experience. Third party solutions such as Association Voting’s online voting service provide the integrity and simplicity your members seek in an election experience.
Ensure the data voters need to make an informed decision is available in real-time! Association Voting offers the option to post candidate bios with candidate photos to offer information when it is needed during the voting process.
Provide a special voting welcome note with organization specific instructions from your association in Association Voting’s online voting service.
If your organization’s members are aware of the election, they receive timely reminders and the election is convenient for them to complete, your election should have an increased voter turnout and a membership that has ownership of the process.
If you and your organization are serious about conducting your next election on-line, your planning discussions may turn to the security of your voting process. Your members should know that the organization’s voting member list will not be sold or shared. You can be confident in that.
To ensure that every election is secure, we at Association Voting:
Use industry-standard 128-Bit SSL encryption for all election access – both for you and your voters.
Use a number of external security scanning and auditing services to verify AssociationVoting.com services and software
Secure your voting manager area with a a unique username and password
Enforce one member/one vote by requiring voters to identify with a member number or other unique identifier and ensuring only one cast ballot per identifier
Ensure voting accuracy by enforcing limits on the number of candidate or write-in selections per position and provide a prompt error notification that requires repair before the ballot can be cast
Require voter validation of selections as a preview step before a ballot can be cast
Maintain a detailed audit trail of voter selections and ballots cast, available to your voting administrator as the voting results PDF and also enabling validation of challenged ballots or results
In addition the following security related items are important:
Optional certified election results include a signed copy of the voting results PDF, certification letter, and electronic storage of your voting results for 12 months
Optional enhanced email announcement service provides added voter verification and security by requiring voters to follow a voter-specific URL or enter a unique security code
All of this is done to make sure your organization has confidence in your election on Association Voting.