Day 15 - Distributed by-elections
When a by-election is called to fill a vacancy on a Local Spiritual Assembly, large communities may decide to hold the by-election just before a Nineteen Day Feast. If the Feast is celebrated in homes or other locations throughout the city, then ballots must be collected in a number of locations at the same time.
TallyJ has a special mode to support this.
This is activated when an election is configured to have ballots for only a single name.
When this is the case, then the ballot entry screen is changed:
Entering single ballots
In each location, tellers will sort the paper ballots into piles according to the name on the paper. Then they simply record how many ballots/votes each person received. When they are done, they set the Status of their area to "Done", to tell the head teller that they are finished entering ballots.
The head teller meanwhile, can monitor the status of all the locations. If each teller ensures that the "Contact Info" is accurate and up-to-date, the head teller can call any of the tellers to offer assistance when needed.
Once all the tellers in each of the locations is "Done" entering their ballots, the head teller and assistant(s) can proceed to analyze the ballots, and determine the results. Once the results are approved, the tellers in each location can view the Teller's Report and share the results with those present where they are.
In this way, distributed by-elections (or tie-break votes) can be smoothly and effectively coordinated with a minimum amount of phoning.