Your school's Board of Trustees determines how your school's elections will run. This can either be as a triennial election (every three years) or as a mid-term election every 18 months.
Whichever your school has opted into, the following steps will support you with your Board of Trustee Elections within Hero. Guidance for Returning Officers, including a planning tool, is available elsewhere online.
EDITING THE ELIGIBILITY TO VOTE
The first step is to edit the voting eligibility of your contacts. Information on who is eligible to vote can be obtained from your Returning Officer (RO).
1. Click on the Quick Links icon (three lines) located on the right-hand side of the screen
2. Click on List Builder
3. Click on PRE-MADE LISTS
4. Click on EDIT VOTING RIGHTS under the heading Board Elections
You will see that the first selection will be for Contact 1.
This will present you with a list of all the 1st contacts for your current students along with the fields that you need to determine if they can vote i.e. their name, address and contact type. Check that their voting flag has been set correctly.
To make any changes to contact details:
5. Click on the Yes or No edit icon
This will take you to the contacts tab on the student to be edited.
This is part of the relationship contact information. See help article Maintaining Student / Contact Relationships
6. Click EDIT on the Contact to be amended.
7. Amend the BOT Voting slider to select the options for the contact. Pink indicates that this contact IS eligible to vote.
It would also be opportune to check the Lives with Student slider as this is often the basis of eligibility to vote.
8. Click DONE and then the SAVE icon to save any changes
9. Use the back arrow to return to the voting list
10. Repeat this process for all Primary contacts. Generate the list for your next set of contacts by changing the number in the drop-down field above the list.
Once you are happy that your contact information is up-to-date go back to your list builder.
PREPARING THE MAIN ELECTORAL ROLL
Click on BOARD MAIN ROLL under the heading Board Elections
This will produce a list of all caregivers who have their voting rights set to Yes.
Note: A caregiver will only appear on this list once as they are only permitted to have one vote. If the same caregiver appears on this list multiple times, this signifies that more than one contact record exists for this caregiver. Take the opportunity to merge these duplicate records so that all students point to the same contact record. This article will help you with this process - Removing Duplicate Contacts
Once you are satisfied that your Main Roll is accurate you have the ability to sort the list in the order you require and then download as a .csv, Excel or print.
This process of editing your primary contact details and producing your main roll can be repeated as many times as you like until you close off your main roll.
Your Returning Officer will instruct you on the specific date and time that your Main Roll is to be closed.
CLOSING THE MAIN ROLL
1. To close the main roll click CLOSE MAIN ROLL
Ensure that you have exported or printed a copy before you close the roll.
Click YES, PROCEED to confirm.
The Main Roll is now closed. The BOT Voting flag for all caregivers on the Main roll becomes protected. You are unable to amend this flag for these caregivers until the election is complete.
The Main Roll is now disabled and the Supplementary Roll will now be displayed.
Note: If you need to reprint the Main Roll after it has been closed, this can be achieved by clicking
ALL VOTERS LABEL DATA and selecting Main Roll only.
PREPARING THE SUPPLEMENTARY ROLL
The Supplementary Roll is generated using the same process as the Main Roll. It will contain any caregiver who has become eligible to vote since the Main Roll was closed. These caregivers will be those connected to new students who have enrolled after the closing of the Main Roll or where a caregiver's BOT Voting flag was amended from 'No' to 'Yes' after the Main Roll closed.
Once again, your returning officer will advise when the Supplementary Roll is to be closed.
CLOSING THE SUPPLEMENTARY ROLL
1. To close the supplementary roll click CLOSE SUPPLEMENTARY ROLL
You will not be able to reopen this once it is closed so ensure that you have exported or printed a copy beforehand.
Click YES, PROCEED to confirm
Once the Supplementary Roll has been closed no new voters can be included in this election. The BOT Voting flag of all included voters will be protected from change until the elections are complete.
Note: If you need to reprint the Supplementary Roll after it has been closed, this can be achieved by clicking ALL VOTERS LABEL DATA and selecting Supplementary Roll only.
PRINTING THE VOTERS LIST FOR ADDRESS LABELS OR THE RETURNING OFFICER
Hero does not provide the facility to produce formatted labels due to the many different label options required by schools. Labels are produced using an external word processing tool i.e. Microsoft Word or Mac Pages.
1. Decide if you need All Voters, Main Roll only Voters or Supplementary Roll Voters by clicking the required checkboxes.
2. Create your mail merge source document by clicking on ALL VOTERS LABEL DATA
3. Click DOWNLOAD AS EXCEL for the most suitable format. This will cater to addresses that contain commas.
4. Open your word processing tool and mail merge the downloaded address list into your desired label format. For further instructions on this see Printing BOT Labels using Microsoft Word
SHARED EMAIL ADDRESSES
The Returning Officer may ask for an email address for each eligible caregiver. Where caregivers share an email address, only one caregiver can have it entered on their account. The shared email can be added to the roll after it is exported, and before being sent to the RO.
DISTRIBUTING CANDIDATE NOMINATION FORMS
Hero does not provide the facility to produce nomination forms, which could instead be created as a document or a Google Form. Distribution can now be by email though would need to be done outside Hero. Remember to use BCC for any bulk emails. You would also need to allow for voters who do not have an email address.
If engagement is high, schools could consider distributing a nomination form embedded in a Community Feed post. However, you would also need to allow for voters who do not engage in this manner, so this might be regarded as a supplementary means of delivery.
ON COMPLETION OF YOUR ELECTION
Once your BOT Election is complete, you will need to reset the parameters for your next election. This process will remove all timestamps and set your system back to Step 1 - Main Roll. It will also allow the BOT Voting flags on your caregivers to again be editable.
1. To complete the election, click ELECTION COMPLETE - RESET FOR NEXT ELECTION
2. Click YES, PROCEED to confirm
FAQ
- A caregiver appears on the roll more than once.
- You have duplicate records. See Preparing the Main Roll above
- Caregivers use the same email address but I can't enter it on both
- Email addresses can't be shared. See Shared Email Addresses above
- I accidentally closed the main/supplementary roll before printing/exporting a copy
- Print All Voters Label Data and select Main or Supplementary roll
- I have changes to make after the Main Roll has closed
- Changes because of a new student joining the school or a change to the voter switch will show on the supplementary roll. No other changes (eg, contact details) will be included. See Preparing the Supplemental Roll above
- Can I use Hero to email voters?
- Not directly, but Hero can help create a list of email addresses to export to your email package.
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