Often, an organization will not have email addresses for all of its voters – or at least not current, valid email addresses. You can collect good email addresses from your voters any way you’d like – you can call voters, or run into them at a party, or send them postcards asking them to contact you, as just a few examples.
For Platinum subscriptions, BallotBox can help with this process. To use this feature, in the Voters tab of your poll, click on the Voter Settings button, which is the gear icon on the right side of the Voters tab.
Next, you will see that Email Address is set to the default – Required. Click on “Can be provided by voter.”
When you do, BallotBox will automatically change the Voter ID from "Email address" to something you will set. You can leave it with the text “Voter ID,” and arbitrarily assign a unique voter idenification number to each voter, or you can change it to a unique number that each voter would know. For example, a bar association could decide to use each voter’s state bar number as the Voter ID, and could change the text in that box from "Voter ID" to "State Bar No."
You can decide whether to require ...
- "no additional credentials" - that means anyone who provides the Voter ID can provide an email address for that voter, and BallotBox will trust that it is accurate
If you set a Voter ID that is public information, such as a State Bar Number, someone could impersonate your voter, and provide an email address that your voter does not control or even have access to. To protect against that, you can choose to require the Voter ID and:
- a "Signup Code" - this is a code that will be generated by BallotBox for each voter who is missing an email address, and each code must be delivered to each voter offline, such as through the postal service
- a "Voter Secret," which is some information both you and the voter would know, but would be unlikely for someone else to know, and hard for someone else to guess
- both a Signup Code and a Voter Secret
There is a trade off here between making the signup process more secure, so you feel more confident that you are being provided a valid email address for each voter, and making it easy to use, so voters do not become frustrated and give up.
Once you have configured these settings, click the Save button.
Now, when you Add Voter or Import Voters, you will be asked to provide the additional information about your voters. For example, if you require a Voter ID, but you do not require a Voter Secret or a Signup Code, the Add Voter dialog box will look like this:
(Note: You will assign a unique Voter ID to each voter, and a Voter Secret to each voter if you are using that feature. You will not assign a Signup Code; that is something BallotBox automatically generates for each voter if you use that feature.)
Next, you will invite your voters to come vote. Voters wilth email addresses in our system will receive an email, like normal.
Other voters will need to be notified another way, such as by letter or postcard, and invited to come to your BallotBox account home page (https://your-organization.ballotboxonline.com). There, they will enter their Voter IDs, along with whatever other information you required in the Voter Settings, and then will be permitted to enter an email address. Because the voter knew the information that you required in the voter settings, BallotBox will trust that the person entering the email address really is that voter.
From that point forward, the voter can participate in BallotBox like any other voter with a valid email address. Moreover, you can export the email addresses that BallotBox captured for you, and use them for other purposes associated with your organization and its privacy policy.
Tip: This feature is only available for Platinum subscriptions, and all Platinum subscriptions receive turn-key service and support from BallotBox staff. That means you do not have to understand everything about our VoterSignUp service – we will walk you through the decisions you need to make, and we’ll set it up for you.