Summary: Forms can be used for church elections or membership voting situations. While you can easily make forms anonymous and limit the total number of entries, be aware that you cannot restrict the form to specific eligible members or prevent someone from voting multiple times. This guide explains how to best configure a form for an election.
Before You Begin
System Limitations: In a traditional voting situation, it is usually essential that voters can only vote a single time and that only eligible members can cast a ballot. Our forms cannot prevent multiple votes by a single user, nor can they prevent non-eligible members from voting if they have the link.
Data Privacy: Voting results are often highly sensitive. You will want to ensure that your form entries are hidden from unauthorized staff or volunteers by adjusting your Role permissions or managing the entries directly.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Making the Form Anonymous
To ensure that votes remain completely anonymous, simply remove any identifying fields from your form builder.
Navigate to Forms and select your voting form.
Ensure the Name, Email, Phone, and Address fields are completely removed from the form.
Only include the fields necessary for casting the vote (e.g., Multiple Choice, Checkboxes).
Limiting Entries and Closing the Poll
You can cap the total number of votes allowed or manually close the voting form when the election period ends.
While editing your form, click on Form Settings.
Max Entries: If you want to cap the total number of votes accepted overall, enter a number in the Max Entries field.
Disable Form: When your voting timeframe has ended, check the option to disable the form. This will prevent anyone else from submitting a vote, even if they still have the link.
Securing the Results (Privacy)
If your form contains private or sensitive voting information that you do not want other system users to see, use one of these two methods:
Method 1 (Role Permissions): Make the form hidden from all other roles besides your own. This can be done by navigating to Account Settings > Roles and ensuring other users do not have permission to view or edit Forms.
Method 2 (Delete After Notification): If other staff must retain Form permissions for their own events, you can set up your Form Settings to email you every time an entry is submitted. Once you record the vote from your email notification, immediately delete the entry from the Breeze system so it cannot be viewed by others.
Troubleshooting & FAQs
Can I prevent a member from voting twice? Because the form can be made completely anonymous, the system has no way of tracking who has or hasn't submitted an entry. Therefore, we cannot prevent multiple submissions by a single user.
Can I restrict the voting link so only members can access it? No. Anyone who has the form link will be able to fill it out. We recommend emailing the link directly to your eligible members rather than posting it publicly on a website or social media page.