Create online ballot papers easily

1. Create ballot papers

 Access the POLYAS Online Voting Manager at configure.polyas.com and give your election a title. Now move to the “Ballot paper” tab.

You will now find your first unnamed ballot paper here. You can give it a name now.

2. Define election rules

To define the voting rules, switch to the “Rules” section. You will now see additional tabs.

In the “Votes” tab, select a ballot type:

• Candidate elections and votes
• List elections
• Or other forms of voting

Below that, define the minimum and maximum total votes for your ballot.

In the next tab, “Lists”, you can add new lists and set the rows, columns and other view options for your list if you are conducting a list vote or using the other voting form. You can also define the votes per list here. You will find a cogwheel symbol after each list. Click on it to assign the list title and, if ticked, to configure the rules for all lists on the ballot paper at once.

When you conduct a vote or candidate election, you can also make layout settings for the ballot in the “Lists” tab and configure the votes per line.

In the “Election Rules” tab, you can allow voting invalidly and abstentions, as well as determine for list and other elections whether votes may only be distributed on one list.

Under “Validations”, you can allow voters to cast too many or too few votes, or display a counter for the remaining votes. Finally, in the “Properties” tab, you can hide the number of votes at the list level.

In the “All Rules” tab, you can view the ballot settings again in one place.

 -> Define the election rules in the Online Voting Manager

 3. Insert ballot text

Leave the “Rules” tab and return to the “Ballot” tab. You can now insert your content here. Simply click on the column or row you want to label. To insert a new row, column or another list, click on the cogwheel symbol and select the corresponding tab (lists, columns, rows). Here you can also delete lists or change the list settings again.

Note: Another way to add columns and rows or to access the list menu is to use the so-called carrot menus. As soon as you move your mouse over a row, a small down arrow appears on the right side of the row. Clicking on it opens a drop-down menu that allows you to access the list settings and also add or delete lists, columns and rows. If you hide the headers and column titles, you can still access the detailed settings via the carrot menu.

4. Further options

Under the “Import and Export” tab, you have the option of:

• Uploading multiple ballot papers at the same time as an Excel file. Please use our template for this.
• or downloading the ballot papers you have created.

Under “Print template” you can download all the ballot papers you have created as a file. Due to the Word format, you can then customize them further and use them for printing ballots for in-person or postal voting, for posting on the notice board or for archiving the ballot papers. You can download the ballot papers as often as you like, but we recommend that you do so at the end of the configuration of the online election, when the when the ballots are finalized.

You can also use our preview option to see the ballot as your voters will see it later during the vote. The preview also allows you to vote to check the rule settings, for example.

5. Create more ballots

To add more ballots to your election, simply click the “+” icon on the far left.

Another unnamed ballot paper will open, along with an overview on the left. Here you can see all the ballot papers you have created and you can also change the order by clicking on the ballot paper at the six points on the right and moving it to the desired position with the mouse held down. If you want to delete a ballot paper, select it and click on the trash can icon in the overview.

Click on the slider symbol to filter your ballots according to different criteria and thus find the ballot you are looking for.

With the search function, you can find a specific ballot using its title.

Create ballot papers now >