When, and When Not, to Use Position Descriptions
Categorized as: Election Tips
On a Board of Directors, it’s pretty common knowledge what the roles of President, Treasurer, Secretary and Director are. But occasionally something is voted on that requires a little explanation. This is almost always the case for things like referendums for changes to bylaws and the like. For these occasions, the Skypunch online voting system supports the ability to provide a full description. This could take two forms depending on how an election administrator configures the setup of a ballot.
- A link appears directly under the position name (or referendum as the case may be), that when clicked, opens a smaller browser window in which the voter may read the full description.
- If the description is particularly short, it may make sense to simply display it directly on the ballot below the heading of that being voted on rather than to open it in a new window.
As an election administrator, position descriptions are a position property managed by visiting the Manage Positions link of your election and toggling whether to display the description or not. By default, the setting for the description is set to no, and should remain that way unless you have a compelling reason for changing it. If you do set it to yes, be certain to populate the description window with an actual description. Too many times I have seen full position descriptions enabled on a ballot, but the election administrator just left the description blank. Nothing should appear on the ballot that isn’t immediately helpful to the voter, and having a link appear that when clicked opens a smaller, and completely empty, browser window is not helpful.
Just like the ability to toggle the display of the link to a full description between yes and no is a position property, so too is the description itself. This means it’s managed by election administrators at the Manage Positions link after logging into your client account. So the dos and don’ts regarding display of full descriptions are:
- Don’t set the display of full position descriptions to yes unless you really intend to.
- If you do set it to yes, make sure to provide a full description rather than just to leave it blank.
