How it works, a quick overview
1. Create an Election
An admin creates an election, giving it a name, a description and a voting window: the date and time voting opens and the date and time it closes. Times are in your account's local time zone, based on your organisation's country, and shown on the edit page. Because members may be anywhere in the world, every voting time they see includes the time zone, for example 7:00am WAT (Nigeria time): on the election page, the member portal, the ballot, the confirmation screen and the receipt email. Members whose device is set to a different time zone also see the time converted to their own clock, for example That's Sat 17 Oct, 2:00am where you are. Leave the times at start and end of day for voting to run the whole of each day. Elections start in Draft status, meaning members cannot vote yet.
You also choose the Ballot privacy for the election:
- Confidential (the default): no one sees how an individual member voted. Results are only ever reported as totals.
- Recorded: your election officers (account owners) can download each member's choices once voting has closed.
2. Set up Offices and Candidates
Within the election, you define the offices being contested: for example, President, Treasurer or Board Member. For each office, you add the candidates who are standing, and for each candidate you can add:
- Name on ballot: if a candidate is known by a different name to the one on their record (Dave rather than David, for example), enter it here. Members see this name everywhere; your admin screens and official records show it alongside the name on file, so it can always be traced back to the member.
- Photo
- Manifesto: the full text, formatted with paragraphs, bullet points and headings. Members see a short preview on the ballot, with a Read more option to open it in full before they choose.
- Manifesto PDF, video link and website, all optional, shown on the candidate's own page.
Do all of your setup while the election is in Draft. Once it is Active, offices, candidates and eligibility rules are fixed, so that every member votes on exactly the same ballot. If you spot something before voting opens and before anyone has voted, set the election back to Draft, make the change, and set it to Active again.
Withdrawing a candidate. If a candidate stands down or is disqualified after the election is Active, use the Withdraw button on their row on the offices page. There is no need to go back to Draft. Choose Stood down or Disqualified and add a comment, for example Letter received 16 Oct 2026, and both are kept together on the record. The candidate is taken off the ballot, the election page and their candidate page straight away. Nothing is deleted: their record, manifesto and page visits are kept, they are listed under the office with the reason and date, and the change is recorded in the activity log and in Records (see Step 19).
A candidate can be withdrawn at any time until the election closes, including during voting. If members have already voted, you are told how many and asked to confirm. Votes already cast for that candidate are never lost: they stay in the office's total and are shown in the results, marked Stood down during voting or Disqualified during voting, and that candidate is never shown as leading. How those votes are treated is for your electoral committee to decide and record. A withdrawn candidate can be reinstated only until the first member votes, so the ballot can only get shorter once voting starts.
Ballot options such as No preferred candidate. Some organisations require a single candidate to win a share of the vote, for example at least 50%. For an office with one candidate you can add a ballot option such as No preferred candidate: add it as a candidate and tick Ballot option. It appears on the ballot and in the results like any choice, but not on the election page or as a candidate page, and it is marked as a ballot option on the configuration sheet.
How this election is decided. On the election's edit page you can write a short statement of the rules, for example how a single candidate office is decided. It is shown at the top of the ballot and on the election page, so every member votes knowing the rules. It can be changed until the first ballot is submitted, then it is fixed.
3. Set Eligibility Rules (Optional)
If only certain members should vote for a particular office, you can add eligibility rules: for example, members in a specific country, city or membership category. Members who do not meet the criteria for an office will simply not see that office on their ballot. An example is a regional office such as 'United Kingdom Lead': you can set an eligibility rule so that only members with 'United Kingdom' in their address can vote for it. If an office has several rules, a member must meet all of them.
4. Test Your Election (Recommended)
Before going live, you can run the whole election with a small group of testers. On the edit election page, press Switch to test and list your testers' email addresses, one per line. While the election is in test, only those testers can see it and vote in the member portal; to every other member it does not appear there yet. The election page stays open to anyone, so you can share it with your committee to check, with a Test strip across the top so nobody mistakes it for the real thing. Testers still need to meet the eligibility rules for each office.
Testers can vote and receive their receipts, and you can close the election and check the results, insights and reports exactly as you would for real. Reset test clears everything from the test so you can run it again.
When you are happy, press Switch to live. You will be asked to confirm, because this deletes all of the test data (ballots, votes, audit figures and page visits from the test) and puts the election back to Draft, keeping your offices, candidates and settings. Set it to Active when you are ready to open it to members.
An election can only be switched to test while it is in Draft and nobody has voted, so a live election can never be put into test, and nothing from a test ever carries into your live election.
5. Check and Approve the Setup
The Configuration Sheet button opens a PDF of the full setup: the voting window, ballot privacy, the public election page address, whether the election is in test mode, which optional features are switched on, which user election emails are sent as, every office, its eligibility rules, and each candidate exactly as they will appear on the ballot, with their photo, profile links and manifestos in full. Share it with your electoral committee to check and approve before voting opens.
Every configuration sheet carries a setup code, a ten character code worked out from everything on the sheet. Any change to the setup gives a new code. When the committee has signed the sheet, add it in Records as a Signed configuration sheet with the code printed on it, and the Records page shows straight away whether the signed sheet still matches the setup, or whether something has changed since it was signed. Every download of the sheet is recorded with its code.
Preview a member's ballot. The eye icon on the offices page opens a Ballot preview. Enter a member's email address and you see exactly the ballot they will get: only the offices they are eligible for, and the candidates standing, using the same checks as the real ballot. It works at any stage, before voting opens or during it, so you can check the ballot before members see it, or answer a member who asks why an office is missing. You are also told if that person is not in the Members category, is not a tester while the election is in test mode, or has already voted. Nothing is saved and nothing can be submitted from the preview, and each preview is recorded in the activity log.
If MyCo is running your election for you, MyCo may place it under an administration lock while setting it up. You can see everything, but only MyCo can make changes, and the configuration sheet is sent to you to review and approve when it is ready. While voting is open under the lock, the lists of who has and has not voted are also kept to MyCo, so turnout by name stays with the people running the election. The elections list shows a locked election with the MyCo logo and a padlock next to its status.
6. Open Voting
When you are ready, set the election status to Active. Eligible members can cast their vote in their member portal during the voting window.
As soon as the election is Active, even before voting opens, members see it in the portal marked Coming up, with the date and time voting opens, a countdown, how many offices they will be able to vote for, and a button to read about the candidates. If a member is not eligible for any office, they are told so straight away, so any problem with their record can be put right before voting day. When the countdown reaches zero, the page refreshes and the Vote now button appears. Each member gets one ballot. Only contacts in your Members contact category have access to the voting portal.
If you need to pause an election before anyone has voted, you can set it back to Draft to make changes. Once the first ballot has been submitted, the ballot stays locked even in Draft.
7. Members Vote
Members log into the portal, select their preferred candidate for each office and submit their ballot. Before it is sent, they are shown a summary of their choices to check. Once submitted, the ballot cannot be changed.
The confirmation screen shows the member's receipt reference: a short code such as VK7Q-M3XP-9D, with a Copy button. It is random, unique to their ballot, and contains no date or time, so it reveals nothing about when or how they voted. Members can quote it if there is ever a query, and auditors can confirm any reference was counted.
A copy of the receipt is emailed to the member. The confirmation screen tells them clearly which address it went to and to check their Junk or Spam folder if they cannot see it. If there is no email address on their record, it asks them to copy their reference or take a screenshot instead. Members who return to the election after voting are taken straight back to this screen.
Receipts are private: the email is delivered as normal, but its content is never shown in Sent Emails inside MyCo, so not even your administrators can read a member's receipt reference. The subject, recipient and date still show, so you have a record that it was sent.
Members may skip an office if it is set up to allow skipping; submitting a ballot counts as participation even if some offices are skipped.
8. Track Voter Participation
While the election is active, and after it closes, admins can view the Voters tab to see exactly who has submitted their ballot and who has not yet voted. Both lists can be searched by name and exported as a CSV file. This is particularly useful for sending targeted reminders to members who have not yet voted (see Step 10).
The elections list shows each election's number of candidates and offices, whether voting is open or has ended without being closed, whether its election page is live, and the number of ballots submitted. The offices page also shows how many ballots have been submitted, and how many votes each office has received so far. This tells you voting is under way without revealing how the votes are split between candidates; that only becomes available once the election closes.
9. Close the Election
When voting ends, set the election status to Closed. You will be asked to confirm, because a closed election cannot be reopened or edited. Results and insights become available to admins immediately.
Every change made to an election, its offices, candidates and eligibility rules is recorded in the activity log against the admin who made it, along with every results and voter list export, giving you a full audit trail.
10. Email Members About the Election
Press the envelope icon on an election, in the elections list or at the top of the edit election page, and choose from emails already written for each stage of the election:
- Voting opens soon: when voting opens and closes, and how to vote.
- Meet the candidates: a link to the election page to read the manifestos.
- Voting is now open: with a Vote now button that takes members to the member portal.
- Reminder to vote and Last call: for members who have not voted yet.
- Thank you for voting: for members who have voted.
- Results are published: a link to the results page.
The email opens in the email composer with the subject, wording, voting times (with the time zone), links and recipients already filled in, sent as the election's email sender (see Step 11). Check it, change anything you like, then schedule it or send it as normal. Nothing is sent until you do. The picker also shows what has already gone out, for example Sent to 1,204 people or Scheduled for 16 Oct, 7:00am, so the same email is not sent twice.
You can also choose the election lists yourself when composing any email in the Email module:
- Election: All, all eligible members for the election
- Election: Voted, members who have submitted their ballot
- Election: Yet to vote, members who have not yet submitted their ballot
11. Choose Who Election Emails Come From
Under Election emails on the edit election page, choose which of your users election emails are sent as: voting receipts, committee access links and the emails started from the envelope icon. Members see that user's name and email address as the sender. Choose a general address, such as your office or secretariat, rather than a person, especially if that person is standing in the election. If nothing is chosen, emails come from your account's default user. The change saves straight away and applies to the next email sent.
12. Share the Election Page
Each election has a branded election page with one link you can share anywhere: your website, newsletter, WhatsApp groups or social media. It opens with a cover showing the candidates' photos, then the offices being contested and the candidates standing, with their manifestos and a link through to each candidate's own page. Visitors can click any photo to read that candidate's manifesto. Only names, photos and manifestos are shown; no other contact details ever appear.
What visitors see follows the election's status, so the same link always shows the right thing:
- Draft: a “Coming soon” page. Nothing about the candidates is shown while you are still setting up.
- Active, before voting opens: the candidates and their manifestos, with a countdown to when voting opens, so members can read up in advance.
- Active, voting open: the candidates, with a Vote now button that takes members to the member portal to sign in and cast their ballot, and a countdown to when voting closes.
- Closed: the candidates, marked as closed.
- Not published: visitors see a holding page that explains where the election is up to.
- Candidates only: the election page as described above, with no results.
- Candidates and results for voters: the same, plus a View results button.
A short, memorable link. On the edit election page you can give the election a Short link, so its address becomes something like app.mycentreoffice.com/election/companyabc2026. Use lower case letters, numbers and dashes. Each short link is unique across MyCo, so no other election can ever use yours. Once set, every link the system produces uses it: the election page, candidate pages, receipt emails, committee links and Page Stats share links. The original longer address always keeps working, so nothing you have already shared breaks. Set the short link before you start sharing, because changing it later stops the old short link working.
The election page address appears with a copy button on the edit election and offices pages. The Public election page setting can be changed at any time.
Optional features. Under Optional features on the edit election page you can switch on extras for the election page. They are all off until you turn them on, save straight away, and can be changed at any time, including while voting is open, as none of them affect the ballot:
- Live turnout: once voting opens, the election page shows how many members have voted so far, updating as votes come in. It shows the total only, never who has voted.
- “Has voted” share card: after voting, members get a card with their name and photo saying they have voted, plus all the candidates, to share on WhatsApp status or social media. It never shows who they voted for.
- Candidate profile links: shows each candidate's LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Facebook links on the election page and their candidate page, taken from the candidate's contact record. Email addresses are never shown.
- Brand colour cover: the cover at the top of the election page uses your organisation's brand colour as its background instead of white, so it stands out and matches your branding. Very light colours are darkened automatically so the text stays easy to read.
13. Answer Common Questions: FAQs
The FAQs tab lets you add the questions members are likely to ask, such as how to vote, who can vote for which office, when voting opens and closes, and who to contact. They appear in their own FAQs section on the election page, with an FAQs button at the top so members can find them easily. You can reorder questions with the arrows, hide one without deleting it, and change them at any time, including while voting is open, as they are not part of the ballot.
14. Committee Access: Live Results Without Voting
Members can only see the live results after they have voted, by entering the reference from their voting confirmation. Your electoral committee often needs to follow progress without voting, so the Committee Access tab lets you give each of them their own private link that opens the live results straight away, without voting and without a reference, even when results are not switched on for voters.
- Emailed automatically: add a person with their name, role and email address, and their link is emailed to them straight away. The email explains how results access works and carries a clear warning, highlighted in red, that the link is unique to them and must not be shared.
- Resend and edit: resend the email at any time, or correct a person's name, role or email address. If you change the email address, the link is sent to the new address.
- Short and secure: each link has its own private code, for example /election/companyabc2026/c/K7QM-3XPV-9D2H. Codes are random and unique, and repeated guesses are blocked.
- Tracked: every time a link is opened it is counted and recorded in the election log against that person's name, and the tab shows when each link was last opened and last emailed.
- Withdraw at any time: withdraw a person's access and their link stops working on their next refresh, without affecting anyone else. Giving them access again creates a brand new link and emails it to them; the old one stays switched off.
- Private emails: like voting receipts, committee link emails are never shown in Sent Emails inside MyCo, so the links cannot be copied from the outbox.
15. See Who Is Visiting: Page Stats
The Page Stats tab shows visits to the election page, the candidate pages and the results page: how many visits and unique visitors, when they came, which countries and cities, which devices, and where they came from. Each candidate's views are shown too. These count both visits to the candidate's own page and members opening the candidate in the quick view on the election page; each visitor is counted once per candidate every 30 minutes, so clicking back and forth does not inflate the numbers.
Page Stats also gives you a tracked version of the election link for each place you share it (WhatsApp, email, your website and so on), so you can see which channel brings people in. Choose a date range and download an Engagement report PDF to share with your committee. Page Stats records visits only, never anything about how anyone voted, and no IP addresses are stored. Visits by your own admins while signed in are marked as internal and left out unless you choose to include them.
Starting with clean stats. Setup and testing bring visits of their own. Before launch, the Clear stats button removes every recorded visit so counting starts again from zero. You will be asked to type CLEAR to confirm, as it cannot be undone. Stats can be cleared until the first ballot is submitted, even if voting is already open; from that point the visits are kept as part of the election's record.
16. View Results and Insights
After closing, admins can view the full results: votes per candidate per office, with percentage share. Results can be exported as a CSV file. A candidate who stood down or was disqualified during voting is listed at the bottom of their office with the votes cast for them before they left, clearly marked, and is never shown as leading. The Insights tab shows how votes for each office were spread across countries, cities and any other member profile fields you have configured, as counts only, never who anyone voted for. Insights can be downloaded as a PDF report or as a CSV file with every value.
17. Audit and Finalise the Results (Optional)
If your election is independently audited, the results page lets you enter the auditor's figure for each candidate, attach the auditor's report, and save as a draft as often as you need. When you finalise, the audited figures become the official result everywhere, including the results page members see, with the system's own counts kept alongside as the reconciliation record. Finalised results are fixed; only MyCo can reopen an audit, with a reason, and this is logged.
The Auditor pack download gives your auditors everything they need in one file: the system counts, the ballot record without any names, the turnout list with nothing linking it to the ballots, every receipt reference so any member's receipt can be confirmed as counted, and a set of integrity checks.
18. Export the Election Report
Admins can export the election results as a PDF document to share with the relevant stakeholders, for example your electoral committee and alumni leaders. It shows totals only and contains no individual voter's choices.
The password protected election report. The Election Report button on every election tab produces a full report of where the election stands, at any stage. You choose a password when you download it; MyCo does not keep it, so share it separately from the file, for example by phone. The report can be printed but not changed. Each download gets its own reference, printed on every page and recorded in Records, so any copy can be traced to who downloaded it and when.
The report is marked to match the stage: a Status report before and during voting, a Provisional report: not audited once voting ends, and a Final report once the results are audited. It includes a summary (voting window, how the election is decided, ballot privacy, turnout and whether the signed configuration sheet still matches the setup), every office with its candidates in ballot order, the results once voting has ended, the audit status, a list of cases (references and status only), and the full Records timeline. While voting is open it shows turnout only, never how votes are split between candidates. It states the figures; who is elected under your rules is declared by your committee. If MyCo is running your election, only MyCo can download it while the election is locked.
19. Keep a Record: Records
The Records tab is the permanent record of the election. Add an entry for anything that should be on record, choosing Decision, Instruction, Signed configuration sheet, Document, Incident or Note, with a title, the date and time it happened (always picked, never filled in for you), details and an optional file such as a signed letter or a scan. Use Instruction for requests such as please email members about the new voting time, and Decision for what the committee agreed.
Entries cannot be edited or deleted. If something is wrong, add a new entry, or void the old one with a reason; it stays on the record, struck through and marked as voided. Each file shows a fingerprint and Not altered since added, proof that nobody has changed it since it was added. The system adds its own entries alongside yours: configuration sheet downloads, changes to how the election is decided, candidates withdrawn or reinstated, reports downloaded, cases opened and closed, the MyCo lock, and when voting opened, the first ballot, when voting closed and when results were audited. MyCo staff can mark an entry MyCo only.
20. Handle Complaints and Queries: Cases
The Cases tab is where anything raised about the election is handled: a complaint, an objection to a candidate, an appeal or a query. It is private to MyCo and to users with the Elections permission, and election cases never appear in the Service Desk.
Use Log a case to record who raised it, an existing contact or someone new, and what they raised. If it came in through your public Service Desk page, use Link ticket with its MCO reference to move it into the election. Each case has a conversation with the person who raised it (they are emailed and can reply through a link), internal notes that are dated and never overwritten, attachments, and an assigned person. A case is closed with a recorded outcome and can be reopened with a reason; cases cannot be deleted. Opening, closing and reopening a case is added to Records by its reference only, so the details stay private.
Elections: secure, confidential and fully managed within MyCo
