Nominations & Elections

Nominations & Elections provide information about an upcoming nomination or election and include a form to fill out a nomination or vote in an election. There are three content types that support this process: 

  • Nominations & Elections: provides general information about the nominations & elections process and automatically previews open nominations and elections. As a regular site editor you will not need to create or edit pages of this content type. 
  • Nomination: for creating new content items with information about and a form to submit a nomination. 
  • Election: for creating new content items with information about and a form to vote in an election.

 

Sections and fields

Both nominations and election pages consist of four main sections:

  • Title: name of the content item/page, typically the position for which there is a nomination or election
  • Info: structure form for you to fill out as a content manager with key information about the nomination or election (committee/subsystem, dates it will be open for, term length, etc.)
  • Sections: will appear as expandable "accordions" with more detailed information about the position and the nomination/election. You can add as many as you like, but we would typically suggest including two main sections:
    • Selection process (or voting process)
    • Description of position
  • Form: for collaborators to fill out to submit a nomination or vote in an election. If you have already created a form or are using an existing form, you can select it from the dropdown. If not, you need to create a form separately using the webforms module.

 

How to create a form for a nomination or election

You can find more information about forms in the webforms page of the User Guide). The easiest way to create a form for a nomination or election is to use an existing nomination or election form template:

  • Nominations: (Search for the form named "Submit a Nomination"). Since nominations forms generally contain the same fields, you can usually just select this form from the dropdown in the "Form" section of the Nominations content item. This will create a new instance of the form. The template consists of three fields:
    • Your name (text field)
    • Nominee's name (text field)
    • Justification of nomination (text area)
  • Elections: (Search for the form named "Vote"). You will mainly need to adjust the bottom section to update the names of the candidates to vote for. The template is set up so votes can select a single candidate. The template consists of four fields:
    • Your name (text field)
    • Your institution (text fiedl). This is included as generally one representative from an insitution is allowed to vote in an election.
    • Select one candidate (item): not selectable; it serves as header for the next field
    • Radio buttons corresponding to each candidate. The template is set up so a user can vote for one candidate. 

 

There are a number of areas of a form that you may want to consider adjusting:

  • Fields. The fields collaborators will fill out. Open the "Build" tab to edit fields.
  • Emails. The email address form submissions will be sent to. The templates are set up to send emails to the site email address (i.e., to site publishers) but you can add yourself and others as well. You can adjust emails by opening the "Settings" tab and selecting the "Emails/Handlers" subtab. 
  • Status. Whether and when a form can be filled out and submitted. It is best to adjust the status directly from the Nomination or Election page:  
    • Under the "Form" field open the "Form settings" section.
    • Under the "status" section select "Scheduled".
    • You can then adjust the dates to correspond to the dates nominations or votes are being accepted. 

 

How to create a nomination or election content item

  1. Make sure there is an existing form you can use, or create a new form from a nomination or election form template.
  2. Create a new content item following the same process you would for other content items. From the list of content types select "Nomination" or "Election".
  3. Fill out the fields, adding the appropriate form in the last section.
  4. Preview the content item and save as "prepublished" when you are satisfied.
  5. Once the publisher publishes the content item it will automatically be added to the "Nominations and Elections" page where collaborators can find open nominations and elections.