Prepared by Sarah Schaaf LSSC Voting Options Prepared by Sarah Schaaf

Introduction By-laws currently state that all voting needs to take place in-person. Given the busy nature of our lives these days and the advent of better technology, we should explore online voting options for those of us who are not able to attend meetings that have an election component. A few options we will look at today are: SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, and email.

Survey Monkey Free Easy to use Anonymous The “Email Invitation Collector” lets you to send email invitations for the votes, monitor email analytics, and track who responded. Feel free to watch the tutorial here We can also limit responses to one vote per email address. Each individual LSSC member would need to have their own email address.

Google Forms Free Anonymous Easy to use (I created this vote below in 2 minutes):

Google forms cont’d. However, in order to ensure that each LSSC member has a single vote, only those who have a google account (a free web-based email) can participate.

Email Each LSSC member sends an email to the show chair with their vote (this apparently is a fairly common way to vote in kennel clubs). It is expected that the show chair will respect confidentiality during the voting process.

Absentee Voting A final option would be sending out an absentee ballot via email a week or two prior to the in-person election. The ballot would need to be printed out and mailed in (at member’s expense) to the show chair prior to the actual vote.

Election Tampering The LSSC should have consequences in-place if election tampering is suspected and/or discovered.

Conclusion Voting options include: SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, Email Voting, and Absentee voting. SurveyMonkey is free, anonymous, easy to use, and prevents voter fraud. Google Forms is free, easy to use, anonymous, and prevents voter fraud BUT everyone must have a Google account. Email voting is free, easy to use, but is not anonymous as the show chair would be collecting the votes. Absentee voting requires extra time and money (printing and postage).