Elections
Nominate candidates, read their platforms, and vote for your organization's officers.
When your organization elects officers, the whole thing happens inside fellos — nominations, campaigning, the ballot, and the result. You do not get emailed a link to a separate voting website, and nobody has to tally anything by hand afterwards.
Finding Elections
Elections is the last section in the left sidebar, below Store. On a phone, tap More in the bottom bar and pick Elections from the Dashboard Navigation sheet.
The section only appears once your Site Admin has switched elections on for your organization. If it is missing entirely, nothing is wrong with your account — ask whoever administers your site.
The elections list
The Elections page lists what is happening now. When you are both involved in some elections and able to follow others, the rows split under two headings with a count each:
- TAKING PART — elections you can nominate in, vote in, or both.
- FOLLOWING — elections you can watch but not take part in. These rows carry a View only badge.
Every row shows the election title, a badge for the phase it is in, the description, the voting window as Voting <start> – <end>, and how many seats are being filled (1 position, 2 positions, and so on).
If there is nothing to show, the page reads No elections yet — "When an election opens that involves you, it will show up here."
Opening an election
Click a row to open it. Back to Elections returns you to the list.
Near the top is a timeline showing the phases this election uses — NOMINATIONS, CAMPAIGN, VOTING and RESULTS — each with its dates. Only the phases your conductor actually configured appear, so a simple election may show just VOTING and RESULTS. The RESULTS box reads "After certification" until the result is final.
Below that, each position on the ballot gets its own card listing its candidates. A position nobody has been nominated for yet reads No candidates yet.
Who can take part
Every election carries its own rules about who may take part, and they are set once for the whole election — not seat by seat. Every position on the ballot uses the same rules. There are four separate sets, and an election can treat them differently:
- Who can vote
- Who can be nominated
- Who can nominate
- Who can second
The last three can each simply be marked Same as voters — whoever can vote can also stand, nominate and second. When they are not, they are spelled out separately.
Each set can restrict two things:
- Member types — particular member types only. With none picked, every member type qualifies.
- Organizations — one or more organization rules, each either a Specific organization or Any organization of a type, and each able to Include descendants (org and below) so a region carries its chapters with it. With no rules at all, members of all organizations qualify.
So whether you can vote in an election is not only a question about your member type — it can also depend on which organization you belong to.
There is one option worth knowing about if you sit on a board or a committee. An organization rule can also carry Also include members whose home organization is in this scope: "Members of a board or division keep a home organization — the chapter or region they actually belong to. This only ever adds people." As it says, it never takes anybody out of an election.
Extra requirements on nominees
Who can be nominated can carry three Tenure requirements that the other three sets do not have. Each is a number of days, and any of them can be left empty for no requirement:
- Min membership days — how long you have been a member.
- Min days in current member type — how long you have held the member type you hold now.
- Min officer days — how many days of officer service you have behind you.
On an election that already exists, those same three values appear under shorter headings — MIN MEMBERSHIP, MIN IN MEMBER TYPE and MIN OFFICER SERVICE — each reading No requirement when nothing was set. They are the same three numbers under two spellings.
One requirement sits outside all of this, and the election page says so itself: "A nominee also has to hold a member type that can take officer roles — set on the Member Types admin page, and independent of the rules above." If your member type is not allowed to hold officer roles, no eligibility rule will make you nominatable — that one is for your Site Admin to change.
If the election page shows a section headed Eligibility & requirements, that is where its rules are written out. It lists WHO CAN VOTE, WHO CAN BE NOMINATED, WHO CAN NOMINATE and WHO CAN SECOND with the member types and organizations each allows — All member types and All organizations when nothing is restricted — then the three tenure lines and SECONDS REQUIRED.
Nominations
During the nominations phase, each position card has a Nominate button in its header. It opens a dialog titled Nominate for <Role> — <Org> with a member search, an optional Note, and a Submit nomination button that stays disabled until you have picked someone.
To stand yourself, nominate yourself — there is no separate "run for office" button.
Two things you may see in the search:
- "More members match than are shown — narrow the search to find someone specific." — type more of the name.
- "No members match the nominee eligibility rules for this election." — nobody the search can offer you meets this election's rules for Who can be nominated. Those rules are set once per election, and they can combine member type, organization and the tenure requirements above — see Who can take part.
When a nomination needs seconds
Some elections require a nomination to be seconded before it reaches the ballot. Those nominations show a Needs seconds (n/m) badge counting how many they have against how many they need, and other members can second them.
While a nomination still needs seconds, the nominee sees only a Decline button — there is nothing to accept yet.
When someone nominates you
Once a nomination has whatever seconds it needs, it is waiting on you. Your row shows an Awaiting acceptance badge with Accept and Decline buttons, and accepting lets you add an optional message that is published under your name. The person who nominated you sees Withdraw instead.
Campaigning and questions
If your conductor set up a campaign period, candidates get a Post your platform button during it. That opens a Campaign platform editor with the usual formatting controls; Save platform publishes it, and it then appears on your candidate row for everyone to read.
Every candidate row also has a Start discussion toggle — it becomes Discussion (N) once there are replies — where members can ask that candidate questions and they can answer. Discussion closes when voting ends.
Casting your ballot
When voting opens, a Cast your ballot card appears. Each position is listed as <Role> — <Org> with its candidates, and Submit ballot stays disabled until you have made a choice.
Submitting opens a confirmation dialog titled Submit your ballot? which lists back your choices and warns: "Once submitted, these votes are final and cannot be changed. Positions you leave blank stay open until voting closes." Cancel backs out; Submit final ballot commits. You then get a confirmation reading "Your ballot has been recorded. Votes are final."
There is no edit and no undo. Once a position is voted, its ballot card is replaced by a read-only receipt headed Your ballot — "Your votes are final. This is the ballot you cast." There is also no write-in option and no abstain option; to skip a position, simply leave it blank.
In an election with several positions you can vote a bit at a time. Positions you have decided show their receipt, while the Cast your ballot card stays on the page holding only the ones you have not voted on yet.
Ranked ballots
Some elections use a ranked ballot instead. Those ask you to drag the candidates into your order of preference rather than pick one, with a checkbox to skip a position entirely. The confirmation is titled Submit your ranked ballot? and warns that "Once submitted, your rankings are final and cannot be changed."
Results
You will not see any running total. While voting is open — and while the election is waiting to be certified afterwards — there are no counts, no percentages and no turnout figures for members.
Once the conductor certifies the result, the badge changes to Results and the page gains a Turnout card, each candidate's vote count and percentage, and an Elected badge on the winner.
Every figure your conductor gets is an aggregate: vote counts per candidate, ballots cast against eligible voters, turnout by organization, and participation by position. Organizations with fewer than three eligible voters are not listed separately — they are combined into one Other organizations row. Nothing in the election wizard, on the election page or in a conductor's analytics view shows how a named member voted. Your ballot is secret: fellos shows how you voted only to you, on your own receipt — not to your conductor, and not to a Site Admin.
Certifying is not just publishing a number. It places the winners into the officer roles they were elected to and closes out the outgoing officer's term, which is why the result and your organization's officer list never drift apart. You can see the change in the officer position history on a member's profile.
Following an election you can't vote in
An election marked View only is one you can see but not take part in — a chapter electing its own representative, say. You get the candidates and, after certification, the result, but no Nominate button and no ballot: "Viewers follow the election read-only — they cannot vote, nominate, second or post."
Which side of that line you fall on comes from the election's own rules for Who can vote, Who can be nominated, Who can nominate and Who can second — member type, organization, and for nominees the tenure requirements. See Who can take part.
How you hear about elections
Elections reach you through the notification bell in the top bar, under its Organization tab — one notification when an election is under way and another when voting opens. There are no election settings of your own to configure.