Running Virtual Student Elections With Minga

As we adjust to remote school and learning environments it’s also student election season for the 2020/21 school year. Here are some tips on running a virtual Student Election Campaign and Voting with Minga.

The Challenge with Virtual Campaigns: With no way to communicate with their piers, many student government candidates will turn to traditional social media like Instagram, SnapChat and TikTok to share their messages and campaigns. Unfortunately, this turns your election into a popularity contest, favoring those with the most followers. These platforms also don’t create a safe place for questions or discussion and create a risk of inappropriate or unfriendly online behaviour.

The Solution with Minga: Running your virtual campaigns, elections and voting on Minga creates a fair and safe place for student candidates to share their message, answer questions and promote discussion while also ensuring it is accessible equally to all students in your school community. It also keeps thing easy for your community because all official campaign information and voting is all maintained in one place.

Step 1: Let your student body and school community know that all official student election content and voting will be happening on Minga. This allows students to ensure they are signed up on Minga.

Step 2: Post a call for submissions and nominations as an ANNOUNCEMENT on Minga with a list of all the available positions and the election schedule.

Step 3: Schedule a time for each candidate to create a POST on your main Minga feed where they can share photos and why they are the best candidate for the position. Encourage students to post comments and questions in the comments section and have the candidate respond and answer those questions on the post as well. Try to limit the number of candidates you feature each day to 2-3 at most so students don’t get overwhelmed reading each day.
PRO TIP: You can also have them create a video or host an interactive townhall session with platforms like ZOOM or Google Hangouts.

Step 4: Use Minga POLLS on the voting day. This works great right now because it’s a time to keep voting simple and easy. Create a POLL for each position and list the candidates.
How to Setup a Poll for Voting
Under Advanced Poll Settings set a Close Poll Date for the day voting is finished (poll will be visible but closed to new votes)
Under Advanced Poll Settings disable Show Poll Results In Feed?
Under Advanced Publish Settings set Publish and Unpublish Date and Times (when a poll is visible on the feed).
Under Advanced Publish Settings you can Pin This Post? to the top of the main feed for up to three days.

Step 5: Publish your results using an Announcement (sends a push notification) and a Post (share pictures of the winners). You can access the results of the Poll in the administration menu.

Congratulations, you’ve just run your virtual ASB Elections! Don’t hesitate to ask any questions, post and share comments and ideas, or send us a request at support@minga.io.

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