Association Election Form

Almost every profession has an association that manages and oversights the practice of its members. As a professional, you’re expected to join the professional association in your industry and participate in its activities, including electing its leaders.

Why join a professional association? Joining a professional association allows you to interact with like-minded individuals who’ll help you grow your career.

Although professional associations are non-profit organizations, they’re expected to elect their leaders periodically. Even though this isn’t a political election, governments provide election policies and procedures to ensure that the people chosen to lead these associations are elected in a free, fair, and verifiable manner.

This is why many associations are deploying digital election systems to make their voting processes easy, quick, and reliable. For your association election process to succeed, there are two important forms you have to generate: the candidate nomination form and the issue form. Avail these forms to all unit owners within at least a month before the election–it’s important to design the forms and distribute them to members as soon as possible. 

There are countless election form templates that you can use for your elections. Moreover, you can deploy a reliable and highly advanced online association voting platform like ElectionBuddy that supports the online form templates to make it easier for the candidates and voters to fill in and submit the forms.

Anyone vying for a position in your association will fill in an association election nomination form and submit it to the election board for verification and approval. This election board can be made of volunteers who aren’t members of the association for fairness.

Creating a Comprehensive Association Election Form

Like any other election, your association’s election is based on forms; the design of your election forms will either simplify the voting process or make it complex. Because you want every member of the association to participate in the election, your election forms should encourage everyone to participate. If you’re using online templates, choose the ones that match your election needs.

Here are the most important considerations to make when creating your association election forms:

Intended Purpose

What do you want the voters or candidates to do with the election forms? This must be clearly defined in the title. If it’s an election nomination form, let the title reflect that. If your association members need to fill in a registration form to participate in the election, make this clear in the title.

Fields

Which fields do the voters or candidates need to fill in? Mark the fields with clear labels to avoid confusion. If they are questions, make them understandable. This simplifies the process of completing the form, saving everyone time and effort.

Layout

The layout of your association election form is very important because it determines the usability and success of the forms. Keep the layout well-organized to make the forms easier to fill in. The fields and other elements of the form should be lined up properly with consistent positioning and margins.

Format

Choose a font size and style that align with the expected response for the sake of  uniformity. If you’re using online forms, use checkboxes instead of dropdowns.

Additionally, the signature fields should stand out to help people find them easily. You can even mark them with an ‘X’ to make them discernable. If there are legal texts in your election forms, make them legible and understandable.

Instructions

You need to instruct the person filling in the form on what to do with the form when they’re done. This information should be included at the bottom of the form where people can find it easily as they complete the forms.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it’s important to keep your election forms simple and easy to fill in. This encourages people to complete them immediately, which can fast-track the voting process. That’s where ElectionBuddy comes in with resources and services sure to streamline any election process!