Election Set Up
The Key Contacts in your school or kura are the 3-4 main people who we will work with and provide updates to. We require the name, email address and preferably phone number as well for each of these people.
| Key Contact | Why we need their details |
|---|---|
| Main Election Contact | This is the main person we deal with day-to-day for the election. This person gets all the updates and communications from us and is the admin user for the Election Admin Portal. |
| Electoral Roll Contact | This is the best person for us to contact if we have any questions about your electoral roll. This might be the same person as the Main Contact, but if you have a specific staff member who looks after enrolments or your SMS, they might be the best person for this. |
| Principal | We know Principals are busy, but we also like to keep them up to date with what is happening with the election. They will receive emails during the nomination and voting phases with updates on how your election is going. They can also be set up with access to the Election Admin Portal to see this information live. |
| Current Presiding Member | We also need to keep the current board up to date with progress, and we do this via the current Presiding Member. They will receive emails during the nomination and voting phases with updates on how your election is going. They can also be set up with access to the Election Admin Portal to see this information live. |
Yes. The legislation states that all board members’ terms end and a new election must be held for triennial elections. This includes the staff rep as well.
You will need to open nominations, and if only one nomination is received by the time nominations close, then the election doesn’t go to a vote, and that candidate is elected.
Electoral Roll
There is a separate electoral roll for each election.
- The electoral roll for your parent election needs to include the student’s mother, father, legal guardian or immediate caregiver. These are defined by legislation, and everyone eligible will be sent a nomination form, and if a vote is required, they will also be sent a voting form.
- The electoral roll for your staff election includes all permanent staff employed by the board, even if they work across multiple schools, and any fixed-term staff who have been employed by the board for at least two months on the day the main electoral roll or supplementary electoral roll closes. If there is a staff member who is also a parent of a student at your school, they will be removed from the parent roll, but can choose to be included on the parent roll instead of the staff roll; they must advise the Returning Officer before the electoral roll closes.
- The electoral roll for student elections includes all students, except adult students, enrolled full-time in year 9 and above at your school.
A copy of the electoral roll for your election, including all names, but not other contact information, MUST be available for inspection at the school office. The Mission Control team will provide you with a copy of the electoral roll for your elections at the close of the electoral roll periods.
Staff who are also parents of students at your school or kura are only able to vote in ONE election for your board, as per Clause 3(7) of Schedule 23 of the Education and Training Act 2020.
Regulation 16 of the Education (Board Elections) Regulations 2022 states that all staff who are also parents of students at your school or kura will ONLY be listed on the STAFF electoral roll. The staff member can request that they are listed on the parent roll instead by advising the Returning Officer in writing before the close of the electoral roll. But they are not able to be on BOTH electoral rolls.
A permanent staff member who chooses to be on the parent electoral roll is able to vote in the parent elections but is not able to stand as a candidate in the election for a parent rep, as per Clause 9(2) of Schedule 23 of the Education and Training Act 2020. A staff member who is also a parent who is listed on the staff electoral roll is able to stand as a candidate and vote in the staff election.
The Principal|Tumuaki is not able to vote in the staff election and is not recorded on the staff electoral roll.
If the Principal|Tumuaki is also a parent of a student at your school or kura, they are eligible to be on the parent electoral roll and may vote in the parent election. They are not eligible to stand as a candidate in the parent election.
No. There is no expectation on schools or kura to update contact information for all of your parents as part of the election process.
But the more up-to-date your contact data is, the fewer people will be excluded. Typically, we find that the email addresses schools and kura hold are quite accurate, but postal address information is less accurate. We do recommend contacting those parents or whanau for whom you don’t have an email address and adding it to your records if they have one.
If they don’t have an email address, check that the postal address you have is current and advise them that voting information for your school board election will be posted to them.
If your contact data hasn’t been updated for a while, you may wish to contact your parent community and have them update their contact information with your school or kura.
If your board chooses to run an online election, the primary method of communicating with voters will be by email. However, if a voter doesn’t have an email address, they will automatically be sent a nomination pack and voting pack, if voting is required, by post. These are sent via NZ Post, so be aware that delivery timeframes do vary.
When paper-based voting packs are sent to voters, the voting form will include a unique QR code that the voter can scan to vote electronically, even if they don’t have an email address.
Nominations
People on the electoral roll are able to nominate themselves or any other person to the board. If someone who isn’t on the electoral roll wants to be a candidate, they will need to be nominated by someone on the electoral roll. This could be a whanau or family member, community member, and so on.
The Act defines who is NOT eligible to be a board member, and these ineligibility criteria are available on the nomination form. Anyone who isn’t ineligible and is nominated by someone on the electoral roll must be accepted as a candidate.
A lot of work starts when the nominations close. Our team has to make sure that all nominations have been accepted or declined, depending on the rules of your election. We confirm if there are enough candidates to progress to a voting election and, if so, we start preparing the voting stage.
If the number of nominations is the same or less than the number of vacancies, then the election ends, all candidates are elected, and they take office 7 days after the close of nominations.
Candidates may still be approved after nominations have closed. Nominations must be received by the Returning Officer by the close of nominations, but the Returning Officer still needs to check that the nomination is valid before accepting it. If there are a large number of nominations received close to the close of nominations, there may be delays in working through these.
When a new nomination is entered into the system, the candidate is automatically sent an email to let them know we have received the nomination. Once the nomination is approved or declined, they will receive another email advising them of the acceptance or decline.
When a nomination is accepted, the key school contacts also receive an email updating the number of accepted nominations, the number of vacancies and the number of days until nominations close. This information is also updated live in the Admin Election Portal that is visible to the key school contacts.
No. Candidates are free to say almost anything they want in their candidate statements, and the Returning Officer is the only person who may edit or remove a candidate statement, and only for very limited reasons.
Regulation 20 of the Education (Board Elections) Regulations 2022 states that a Returning Officer may only edit or remove a candidate statement if they believe that it is likely to be defamatory, offensive or is too long.
Candidate statements and profile photos are not required, but they are strongly recommended. Candidates do need to supply any statements or photos to the Returning Officer before the close of nominations. No statements or photos can be accepted after this time.
If a candidate doesn’t provide these when they fill in their online nomination form, they can be emailed to [email protected] and need to include the school name in the email.
Under current legislation, the Returning Officer is required to accept all valid nominations. We check that the nomination has been completed correctly and that the candidate has confirmed that none of the exclusions applies to them. There is no provision in the legislation that allows the Returning Officer to perform additional checks.
For nominations to the parent elections, the nominator MUST be on the electoral roll, but the candidate doesn’t need to be. Candidates who are on the electoral roll can self-nominate and don’t require someone else to nominate them.
For nominations to the staff or student elections, both the candidate and the nominator MUST be on the electoral roll. Candidates who are on the electoral roll can self-nominate and don’t require someone else to nominate them.
Yes. All current parent, staff and student board members have their board term end the day before the new board takes office, as per Clause 8(7) of Schedule 23 of the Education and Training Act 2020.
If an existing board member wants to stay on for another term, they must be nominated as a candidate and stand in the new election. There is no ability under current legislation to remain on the board without standing as a candidate.
Candidates are able to provide a candidate statement of up to 400 words. While this is optional, it is highly recommended. It is up to the candidate as to what information they wish to include, as long as it is not offensive or objectionable.
Recommended topics candidates may want to discuss in their statement include:
- Their connection with the kura and the reason for standing
- Their experience and qualifications
- What they will bring to the School Board
- Anything else reasonably linked to the kura and education
Candidates are also able to provide a photo with their nomination. Photos and candidate statements are completed online if the nomination is submitted through the Election Pilot portal. If a candidate doesn’t provide these when they fill in their online nomination form, they can be emailed to [email protected] and need to include the school name in the email.
Just scan it and email it to the Mission Control team. There are no special handling requirements for nominations.
Please email these through as soon as possible after you receive them. This gives us as much time as possible to contact the candidate if anything is missing.
All of the accepted candidates will be elected and will take office 7 days after the close of nominations. Any vacancies that were not filled become casual vacancies, and your school board will have casual vacancies that will need to be filled.
Clause 13 of Schedule 23 of the Education and Training Act 2020 has all the steps that boards must follow to fill a casual vacancy. If this occurs with your election, the Mission Control team will be in touch to provide advice on what the next steps will be for your board.
Yes. All board members’ terms come to an end at the election, so they need to be nominated and stand for election again. The legislation doesn’t allow people to stay on the board without going through the election process.
Existing board members do need to be nominated and run as candidates if they want to stay on the board. If they are not on the electoral roll, usually because they no longer have children at the school or kura, then they will need someone who is on the electoral roll to nominate them.
If the existing board member is on the electoral roll, they are able to nominate themselves.
We send reminder emails at a few key points during the nomination phase. These are sent to anyone on the electoral roll who has a current email address. No reminders are sent to people who receive postal voting packs.
We also recommend that you include reminders about the election and nomination period in your school or kura newsletter, school app, social media, and similar channels.
No, these must be received by the Returning Officer by the close of nominations.
The candidate statement and profile photo are part of the nomination details and must be received by the close of nominations. There is a lot of work that goes into preparing the voting papers to be issued, and there is not much time between the close of nominations and the opening of voting to get this done.
A candidate may withdraw their nomination at any time by advising the Returning Officer in writing.
If a candidate withdraws before the close of nominations, their nomination will not be visible publicly. If a candidate withdraws after nominations have closed and the election still has enough candidates to progress to a vote, the candidate’s name will still be listed on the electronic voting platform, but will show that the candidate has withdrawn. For example, their name will be displayed as SMITH, Joe (Withdrawn).
The reason for this is that paper-based voting packs may have been printed or issued, which include the candidate’s name, and these voters need to be able to see that the candidate has withdrawn.
No, once a nomination is accepted, only the candidate can withdraw their nomination.
Voting
If your election receives the same number or fewer candidates than there are vacancies, this is a non-voting election. All of the accepted candidates will be elected and will take office 7 days after the close of nominations.
Any vacancies that were not filled become casual vacancies, and your school board will have casual vacancies that will need to be filled. Clause 13 of Schedule 23 of the Education and Training Act 2020 has all the steps that boards must follow to fill a casual vacancy. If this occurs with your election, the Mission Control team will be in touch to provide advice on what the next steps will be for your board.
Electronic voting follows the same main steps but uses the Election Pilot voting platform rather than a paper ballot.
An email is sent to voters on the electoral roll who have an email address, and the email contains voting instructions and a unique voting link for them. The voter clicks on the voting link, and it will take them directly to your board election page and validate them as an eligible voter.
Voters can read the candidate statements and see profile photos, if they were supplied by the candidate. Voters can then vote for up to as many candidates as there are vacancies. For example, if you have 5 vacancies for a parent election, they can vote for up to 5 people and then submit their vote.
Once the vote is submitted, they can’t edit or change their vote, and they can’t vote again. They can still use the voting link to access the election, see the candidate statements, and so on, but they will not have the option to vote again.
All eligible voters who don’t have an email address will be sent a voting pack in the post. This will include a voting form, a copy of the candidate statements, if provided by the candidates, and a return envelope. The voter can choose to vote electronically OR manually.
To vote electronically, the voter scans the unique QR code on the voting paper and follows the same process as electronic voting.
To vote manually, the voter removes the top section of the ballot paper with their details, marks on the ballot for whom they want to vote, and places it in the return envelope. The return envelope must be sealed and returned to the school office before voting closes at 4 pm on election day.
The Election Pilot platform has systems in place to prevent someone from voting using the QR code AND by submitting the paper vote.
The Mission Control team will be in touch with your school or kura to provide a courier label to return any paper votes to us for counting.
The morning after election day, you should remove any paper votes from your ballot box, place them in an envelope, attach the courier label and follow the instructions to book the pre-paid courier. DO NOT open any of the returned voting envelopes.
No. The encrypted voting token is embedded in the unique link that is sent to the voter. They can use this link as many times as they like to access the voting page, read candidate profiles, and so on. Once they submit their vote, the voting token is marked as used, and no further voting can occur for that token.
The voter will still be able to use the link to access the election, and they will be able to access and read candidate statements, but there will be no option to vote again.
No. While our paper-based votes do include a unique QR code allowing the voter to vote online, our system picks up if they have already voted.
When we receive paper votes, we scan a unique barcode that is on the voting paper. This barcode is an encrypted version of the voting token, and if it has already been used in our system, it will not let us enter the manual vote. This ensures each voter can only vote once.
This is because our system is built with a number of precautions in place to protect the integrity of the election. Because of these internal systems, we aren’t able to see who has voted already, and reminder emails are sent to all registered voters.
We understand that might be a bit of a pain, but it is a small inconvenience to ensure the voting is secure. We also only send a few reminders, and once voting closes, you won’t see any more.
Results & Reporting
As soon as the results are available, we will send a copy of the Declaration of Results to the key contacts at your school or kura and also to all candidates, including successful and unsuccessful candidates.
For parent and staff triennial electronic elections, we will send a copy of the Declaration of Results to everyone on the electoral roll two days after releasing the results to the school and candidates. For staff by-elections, student elections and paper-based elections, the school must publish the Declaration of Results to the school community.
When results are published, they must include the names of the candidates, the number of votes cast for each candidate and the total number of invalid votes. The publishing of the results in this way is required by Regulation 26(4-5) of the Education (Board Elections) Regulations 2022.
Changes to your school board need to be reported to the Ministry of Education using the School Board Updates Form.
The Election Pilot team will complete this form on your behalf for any elections we run for your school or kura.
You will need to complete this form if you have a change in Principal or Presiding Member, if you have any new co-opted or selected board members or if you have any board members resigning from your board.
If your election goes to a vote, voting forms and a copy of the electoral roll must be transferred to the local District Court, and this is something that Election Pilot does for you.
For electronic elections, a record of all electronic votes is provided in place of the voting forms. The record of electronic votes uses a randomised vote ID number so that it is impossible to know who voted for which candidate.
Security & Privacy
No. Each voter is able to vote only once. It is possible that if the voting email with the unique link was shared with other people, someone could vote in the election, but each voting token can only be used once, so there would only be one vote recorded on behalf of a particular voter, even if someone else cast the vote.
The voting emails include a link with an encrypted voting token embedded in it. Voters can use this link as many times as they like to access the voting page, read candidate profiles, and so on. Once they submit their vote, the voting token is marked as used, and no further voting can occur for that token.
Voters will still be able to use the link to access the election, and they will be able to access and read candidate statements, but there will be no option to vote again.
No, you don’t. School board elections are required to be held by legislation, and Regulation 14 of the Education (Board Elections) Regulations 2022 requires the Returning Officer to prepare an electoral roll for each election, and this information must be provided by the school or kura.
Most schools or kura state that parents are providing their information to your school or kura to enable the administration of the school or kura, and the running of school board elections is part of the administration of the school or kura.
It is important to note that Election Pilot does not use voter information for any purpose other than to run the election for your school or kura, and all data for the election is deleted 60 days after the close of the election.
We only access the information we need to run the election. No additional information is accepted by our system. The information we need from your SMS is the parent’s name, postal address and email address, if one is listed in your SMS.
In order to run school board elections, schools need to provide the Returning Officer with the names, postal addresses and, if available, email addresses of all parents of students enrolled at their school or kura.
This personal information is ONLY used to run the election as required by the Education and Training Act 2020 and the Education (Board Elections) Regulations 2022. We DO NOT use this information for any other purpose. Regulation 14 permits the school to provide this information to the appointed Returning Officer for the purposes of running a school board election.
Because there is a higher risk of this personal information being breached in an electronic election, one of the primary reasons that schools and kura who wish to run elections electronically MUST use a provider that is accredited by the Ministry of Education is that the accreditation process ensures that there are appropriate protections and controls for the personal information held.
As part of our accreditation by the Ministry of Education, all election information is deleted from our system 60 days after the close of the election. This happens automatically, and after these 60 days, we can’t access any information about the election, including candidate or voter details.
Other
Boards can choose to move to a staggered election cycle where half of the parent board positions are elected every 18 months for three-year terms. A board can only move to a staggered election cycle starting from the next triennial elections, and there are some rules about consultation with your community before you can change. Talk to the Mission Control team about what is involved if your school or kura wishes to move to staggered elections.
With staggered elections, half of the available parent board positions will be elected at the triennial election period and the remainder elected 18 months later, commonly referred to as mid-term elections. If you have an odd number of parent positions, then the greater number will be elected at the triennial elections. For example, if you have 5 parent board members, then 3 will be elected at the triennial elections and 2 at the mid-term elections.
The staff rep will be elected at the triennial election period.
If you are moving to your first election under staggered elections, then you will effectively hold two elections for parent board members. One will be for a 3-year term, and one for an 18-month term that will go through to your first mid-term election and then that will be for a 3-year term moving forward.
Candidates can only stand for either the 3-year OR 18-month term election and are unable to stand in both elections.
Intermediate Schools, schools with students at Years 7-8 only, also include the parents of students who are likely to be enrolled at your school or kura in accordance with Clause 1(1) of Schedule 22 of the Education and Training Act 2020.
To ensure that parents of likely students are included in the electoral roll for an intermediate school or kura, the details of all year 6 parents need to be requested from key contributing schools in your area. If your intermediate school or kura has an enrolment zone, remove any parents who do not live in your zone.
In this situation, parents will be listed on the electoral roll at the contributing school AND your intermediate, even though they may not currently have students at the intermediate school or kura. These parents are eligible to stand as candidates and vote in both elections.
This creates a casual vacancy on your board. Boards are required to fill casual vacancies by selection or by-election. Regulations 12 and 13 of the Education (Board Elections) Regulations 2022 cover the details around casual vacancies, but contact the Mission Control team and we can talk you through the options available to your board.
Yes, you do. The current legislation doesn’t provide for a school to not hold a staff election in an election year. However, if only one nomination is received, the election will end at the close of nominations, and no voting is required.
The Returning Officer is the person who is responsible for running the election, is the primary point of contact and takes on the responsibility for ensuring all the requirements are met. When you have Election Pilot run your elections for you, we are the Returning Officer for your election.
