Ballots and voting methods

Scottish STV is for multi-seat contests where voters rank candidates and surplus votes transfer. Use it when you are filling several seats on a committee and want ranked-preference fairness. First-past-the-post is for simpler single-winner (or similarly simple) contests. Approval voting lets people mark every candidate they support without ranking them.

If you are unsure and your rules expect Scottish STV for multi-member elections, choose STV and set vacancies to the number of seats you are filling. You can still run a different method on another ballot in the same election.

Add a separate ballot for each position (Chair, Treasurer, Ordinary members, and so on). Voters normally receive one email covering every ballot in the election. That keeps the experience tidy for members and keeps your credit spend tied to people invited, not to the number of posts.

Optional shuffle changes the order of candidates each voter sees, which helps keep the ballot fair when names would otherwise sit in a fixed list order.