The aim of using an online ballot facility is to make the process as accessible as possible to parents.
The Ballot will be conducted as a secret ballot and the voting preferences of parents will be secret. Parents are asked to provide their names and a contact email as a means of verifying their eligibility to vote but these details will be accessible only to the Returning Officer, as clerk of election, and a senior officer within the school to assist in counting the vote. This information will be treated in absolute confidence.
As votes are returned they will be checked off against the pupils on the school register to ensure that each parent only votes once. This will be done by the senior officer as described in point 2 above in strictest confidence.
In the unlikely event of there being an attempt to use a parent’s identity to cast a duplicate vote, all votes from that individual will be discounted and the parent contacted directly by the Head of the school to resolve the issue.
All nominees will be invited to view the count data on the closing day of voting. This will be anonymised data that indicates the number of votes received by each candidate only and not the identity voters to protect the integrity of the secret ballot.
Voting returns that allocate votes to more than one candidate for the same vacancy will be counted as spoiled for that vacancy.
Parents will be informed of the election by email and in the case of those parents for whom we do not have email details, by letter. We will also publicise the election in our school newsletter and on our social media pages.
Parents who do not wish to use the online version can return a paper voting slip to school by post or by hand.
The online version will be password protected. The password will be supplied to parents by email/letter/text.
The school will use its Cognito Forms online school form system to collect responses. The school has reviewed and agreed a data processing addendum with Cognito Forms and has an impact assessment in place. Data collected as part of this ballot is not sensitive in terms of GDPR definitions of personal data. It is reasonable to say that the security of data using this system is as robust as would be the case using a conventional postal ballot.
The data collected and stored online will only be retained by the school until the election process is deemed complete and then deleted. This is made clear in a privacy statement incorporated into the online ballot and parents are asked to consent to the supply of data for the purposes of the ballot.
