Elections Manager : - module for the Web Labs eDemocracy Suite

Download the Election Manager features list here in a two page PDF format.

There is an increasing awareness that there is a need to get more of the citizens interested in politics and voting.
The Elections Manager website module is designed to assist Local Authorities to promote the citizen awareness of elections and to then rapidly deploy the results in a professional & accessible format, but at a reasonable cost.

System Overview

Elections are important at a local and national level. Although they are not a continuous process, Web Labs can prove your investment with the stand alone Election Manager module, or supply it as part

To create an awareness of elections the system will provide key information to web pages branded to meet the requirements of the client web site including:

Candidate list with political parties and boundaries / wards
Candidate registration
Why Vote?
How to Vote?
Postal vote information
Location of polling stations
Voting timetables
History of voting in the area with visual chart analysis and a variety of statistical view options
Options to view political balance of parties in previous local and national elections
How to register to vote

Voting live

When the vote counting is in progress the Elections Manager allows for the ballot count to be entered in real time by election officers. The system will then immediately calculate the results including the percentage of the vote, the swing percentage and even spoiled votes. To suit your preferred results analysis, information can be rendered in a variety of table based or visual based statistical views.

Web Labs are confident that your future elections will be the most transparent yet with the Elections Manager!

Sharing the democratic process

Where the drama of the election count is important, but access restricted for security reasons, you can share the count of the vote event with citizens and local press officers with other neat features of the software including:

Projection friendly scoreboard - for large format projectors in
Optional video feed support for clients that wish to use their streaming video cameras
Live updates via Twitter feed API
Count status alerts

System Benefits

Entirely browser based and requires no local software install
Publishes information to the public and encourages them to vote
Provides a level playing field to all candidates
Centralises the source of all essential information about voting for citizens and proposed candidates
The results of any election

Case study: Impressive Preston

Preston were notably impressive in communicating their results. They tweeted and updated their Proud Prestonian Facebook wall live with the results. Presentation of the results on their own site is impressive too, with a “scoreboard” that includes a %age turnout and spoilt ballot paper numbers and uses the party icons by each candidate – a small thing, but just makes it easier to make sense of the results with a glance: http://www.preston.gov.uk/elections/election/17/scoreboard

They also have a graph to show share of vote, which is interesting given all the debate about the FPTP (first past the post) versus PR (proportional representation): http://www.preston.gov.uk/elections/election/17/shareofvote

And here's their comparison doughnut graphic, which shows no change for them at this elections: http://www.preston.gov.uk/elections/elections/17/councilcontrol SOCITM included Preston in their study of election communications across 50 councils:
May 2010