When you create a totally new organizational account through which to manage elections using the Skypunch online voting system, you become the account owner. However, there are other types of user accounts that may be associated with your organization and this article explains each so you understand the security benefits of using the right account type for each person you wish to permit to access the system.
The Account Types
Owner
As already mentioned, the owner is the person who creates a totally new client account at Skypunch. An account owner has full permissions and may take any action within the account as there are no restrictions on it whatsoever. One such action may be the creation of other user accounts which is something only the owner may do.
Election Administrator
An election administrator may do anything the owner may do with the exception of creating new users. If election administration will be performed by someone other than the account owner, this is the type of account to create for that user.
Ballot Submitter
A ballot submitter has lesser permissions than an election administrator but may, as the name suggests, submit ballots into the system on behalf of voters who submit paper ballots. The ballot submitter may also view all settings associated with an election, but not modify those settings or create any new elections. A ballot submitter is to be used in cases where those submitting paper ballots are different from those creating and administering the election and you wish to ensure election settings do not get modified by someone processing paper ballots.
Read-only
As the name suggests, a read-only account may only view the settings across an election but not modify any of those settings or submit any ballots. Read-only accounts are useful when you wish to have someone perform a review of the election setup without being able to actually modify anything. The one operation a read-only account may perform other than to read is to make payment on an invoice. This is useful for cases where the person making payment on an election invoice works in a finance or accounting department and has no involvement with an election other than to pay for it.
