I am really pleased to announce our next release of ElectionBuddy – we call it version 3.  We’ve added a bunch of cool features – but the coolest thing that we did was let our customers prioritize the feature list!

The new features include:

• Write-in candidates: not only is it easy to allow your voters to add their own candidate names, we’ve made it easy to tally and merge the write-ins.  For example, if someone adds  a write-in candidate Dave B and another 3 people add the write-in candidate David B., you can combine both into 1 candidate for the purposes of tallying results
• Multiple candidates: we were told that administrators wanted to offer a  their voters the ability to select multiple candidates, but not have to rank them.  For example if you have 3 board positions, and 5 candidates, you can allow your voters the ability to select 3 of 5 candidates.
• Election payment clarification: Users wanted to know more clearly when an election ISN’T free – a really fair comment.   All our elections start off as free, and then when you add options like write-in ballots or lots of voter email addresses – that is when pricing kicks in.  We hope that we have made it crystal clear why there is a charge and how to go back and make your election free.
• Duplicating voter lists: – have an executive and want to have them vote on a motion or bylaw or 2?  It’s easy to setup elections and duplicate the email lists from a previous election – a fast and eay way to record your in-camera votes!
• Early election closing: if you have all your ballots, or you are in a meeting, or you want to test how results work right away – as the administrator you can close your election early.
• Ease of use: we get alot of nice feedback that our election process is easy.  We have added a bunch of clarification to terms and processes so you can quickly offer a great election.

Thanks to our friends at the National Association of Parliamentarians and especially our champion Alan Jennings, they gave us a bunch of help in checking our our new release!

And our fantastic developers Mike and Brady!  To see all their fine work, view the details at www.electionbuddy.com

For the future, we have a bunch of new thoughts based on feedback, but I’d love to hear what you think would be the coolest

• Easier Linkedin, Facebook or other social network integration (let us know what you like the most)
• Other CRM integration (we currently offer Highrise, but we have been considering others).  We have also built an API to allow other applications the ability to create elections.

Or more importantly, let us know what you want!