Many organizations have found that using a web-based board portal with built-in remote voting capability will increase the participation of members who can’t make it to the meetings physically. The process is easier to manage, more reliable, and gives members to vote from anywhere. But, there are essential points to keep in mind when considering remote voting.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that email isn’t a secure medium for an uninvolved vote. Email accounts for business and personal use are easy for cyber criminals to hack into and manipulate the results of a vote. This could lead to a null vote. This type of manipulation is difficult to detect and even harder to prove, if you don’t have an extremely secure system like the board portals that many companies use.
A vote sent by email may not reflect the true intention of the person casting the vote. As a member responds to an email, they are able to select from a range of responses, ranging from simply a yes or a no to an elaborate paragraph detailing their views on the issue. This can cause confusion for other voters or lead to an unintentionally unclear vote.
In these circumstances, it’s vital for any organization that is considering implementing email voting to have a strict procedure in place. A thorough session of training regarding the software that the company uses must be offered prior to the time of the vote to ensure that each member is confident in how to use it before any remote voting takes place.
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