Roles explained: Admin, Manager, and ERO

Many organisations need more than one person involved in elections, without giving everyone the same authority. Roles let you keep billing and organisation policy with a small set of trusted people, while returning officers run individual elections for their branch, region, or committee.

On Free and Pro there is a single Admin who also runs elections. Manager and Electoral Returning Officer (ERO) seats are for Scale and Enterprise, when you have colleagues who should run elections without owning the subscription.

Manager and ERO roles is only available on Scale or Enterprise (need it? book a call to discuss our affordable custom plans).

Choose Admin for whoever is responsible for the SimpleVote account itself: the plan, invoices, Usage, and organisation-wide defaults (settings, branding on Scale and above, and who else is invited into the organisation).

In practice that is usually a national or HQ role, a general secretary, or the staff member who holds the contract. Admins can also open every election if they need oversight, but most of their day-to-day work is organisational rather than running every poll personally.

Choose Manager when someone should set up and oversee elections across a patch (for example a region, department, or cluster of branches) without holding the organisation’s billing details.

Managers create elections, group them in folders, clone previous setups, assign returning officers, and review turnout and Analytics. They are the bridge between “we need an AGM for this branch” and “this ERO is running it.” Organisation settings can also let Managers invite EROs so the Admin does not have to staff every poll.

Choose ERO for the person who will deliver a specific election: build ballots and candidates, upload the voter roll, send invitations and reminders, watch turnout, calculate results, and publish.

By default an ERO works on elections they are assigned to. If your organisation turns on Allow EROs to create elections, they can start new elections themselves when that fits how you work. EROs do not manage the organisation’s users, plan, or billing.

• One person does everything (common on Free/Pro): they are the Admin.
• HQ owns the account; local volunteers run each AGM: Admin at the centre, EROs assigned per election.
• A regional officer sets up many elections and assigns local ROs: give them Manager, then assign EROs.
• Someone only ever runs one or two elections a year: ERO is enough; they do not need Admin.

No organiser role can see how an individual ranked candidates after casting is complete. Turnout (who was invited and who has voted) is available so you can run the election; preference secrecy is built in.