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FAQs
What is BallotPoint?
BallotPoint is a standardized Union Officer election process and methodology specifically designed to meet the dictates of Title IV of the LMRDA. BallotPoint Election Services provides unions with an integrated approach and capability for conducting self-administered union elections. BallotPoint Election Services provides the infrastructure necessary to support the election. Unions remotely access the system to administer and vote in the election. The union’s election officials retain full responsibility and authority for the election, as called out by the LMRDA.
BallotPoint supports the effort by providing an environment in which ballots remain secret even as extensive and unique opportunities for election-observation are made available. A convenient way to think of this approach is as a “hosted election,” where a union is neither conducting the election in isolation, nor has the election been “thrown over the wall” to a third-party service provider. Instead a union conducts its election in collaboration with BallotPoint Election Services, using a time-tested and proven set of tools and capabilities.
Who is CCComplete?
CCComplete is an employee-owned company with employees who are members of Graphic Communications International Union (GCIU) Local 2/289M. CCComplete is the developer of the BallotPoint Remote Access Voting (RAV) technology and the creator of the BallotPoint Election Services methodology.
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How do we know BallotPoint works? Has it been used before?
BallotPoint has been proven and accepted in over 6 years of use by Local and International unions, as well as by the National Mediation Board (NMB), a federal agency which conducts union representation elections for the airline and railroad industries. BallotPoint has been used in over 1,600 elections with more than 750,000 votes cast. There has never been a successful challenge to any BallotPoint-conducted election.
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How does BallotPoint work?
Each union member is assigned a unique voter identification number (VIN) and then chooses a personal identification number (PIN). Using your VIN and PIN, you access the balloting system either by telephone or Internet.
Upon successful access, simply select the ballot from a list presented to you by the system, indicate your ballot choices and submit the ballot. When submitted, your vote is deposited in a secure vote repository. You are then asked to review and confirm the deposited vote, at which time you are given a unique vote confirmation number to use later to view your vote as it appears on the official tally sheet.
BallotPoint is the only election methodology that allows all voters to view and confirm the details of their votes as shown on the final tally sheet, while maintaining complete ballot secrecy.
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How do I know my ballot is secret in a BallotPoint election?
BallotPoint was designed to meet the dictates of Title IV of the LMRDA. Election information and access to that information is separated across three different systems in a way that defines and controls authorized secured information exchanges. Simply stated, no one, including BallotPoint’s own engineers, has access to your vote, except you. In the unlikely event of someone illegally accessing your vote information, they still would not be able to connect the contents of your vote with your identity.
All election methods must be based upon prudent practices that have been applied in the form of controls: Controls that guard against ill intent; Controls that guard against carelessness; Controls that provide separation of responsibilities; Controls that provide protection of confidential information; Controls that guard against and prevent misuse and abuse; Controls that provide a record to allow independent review and scrutiny; Controls that provide accountability. All of these controls are in force in every BallotPoint election.
All election methods must provide adequate safeguards to insure confidentiality, anonymity, integrity, and secrecy. All election methods must balance the requirements under the law so as to optimize the law’s intent. BallotPoint was specifically engineered to comply with the dictates of Title IV of the LMRDA.
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How do I know that the vote I cast is the vote that was recorded?
After you make all your ballot selections by phone or Internet, you submit (cast) your vote. Your submitted vote is “deposited” or stored in a secure vote repository. The BallotPoint system then asks you to confirm the vote that was deposited. Once you confirm, the system issues a confidential vote confirmation number (VCN), and you are advised to save the VCN in a safe place. The VCN is given to no one else.
After that, you may — at any time until the election closes — log in to the BallotPoint website to once again review the receipt of your stored vote. To view your receipt, you must enter the VCN given to you.
When the results of the election are made final, you can verify that your vote was included in the tally by checking the official tally sheet, which lists the content of each counted vote alongside the corresponding VCN.
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Is Remote Access Voting using BallotPoint secure?
Yes. CCComplete subscribes to the philosophy that no one element in and of itself can make a balloting system secure, confidential, reliable and accurate. But rather, it takes the combination of intent, policy, procedure and technical safeguards to guarantee system integrity. CCComplete views this combination of intent, policy, procedure and technical safeguards as building a ‘wall of integrity’ around the election process, with each component being a ‘brick’ within the wall, and each procedure being ‘mortar’. While no one brick will make the wall secure, by combining our components and procedures into an integrated election methodology, we have built a wall with the highest level of secrecy, anonymity, confidentiality and accuracy. CCComplete has engineered every component and procedure within the balloting process to comply with the dictates of Title IV of the LMRDA.
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Our union has been conducting mail ballot elections for years, why should we consider changing now?
In the past 3 years the OLMS conducted 367 investigations into officer elections. During this same period the OLMS supervised the conduct of 96 officer elections. The vast majority were the result of challenges to mail ballot elections. Like your union, these unions had undoubtedly conducted successful mail ballot election in the past, but given the complexity and pitfalls associated with mail ballot elections, each mail ballot election is at risk of not withstanding a challenge.
Conducting an election is not something a union does every day. At the same time, the dictates of Title IV of the LMRDA are exacting. An already complex process is made even more complex by the large number of manual tasks that must be carried out as part of a mail ballot election. With added complexity comes a higher risk of making a mistake, a mistake that may result in a challenged election, or worse, an overturned election. BallotPoint takes the guess-work out of union elections.
During the same 3-year period, over 600 BallotPoint elections were conducted without a single challenge, or OLMS investigation. Why risk your next election when you don’t have to?
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How does BallotPoint handle recounts?
Like any other election process, there could be a call for a recount. After an election has been closed and the results tallied, the union’s election officials may access the contents of the vote repository for the purposes of conducting a recount of the votes. The stored votes do not contain any information that would enable anyone to connect a voter with the contents of his or her vote.
Additionally, when the results of the election are made final, every voter has the ability to confirm the specifics of his or her vote as they appear on the official tally sheet using their vote confirmation number (VCN). Only BallotPoint provides this level of assurance that every vote is counted and counted correctly.
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How can observers monitor a BallotPoint election?
Under federal law, every candidate in an election is allowed to have an observer present at various steps during the election process. As defined in the OLMS Guide, their role is limited to observing the election process, asking procedural questions, challenging the eligibility of individual voters and lodging protests with election officials, as appropriate, but not to interfere with or disrupt the conduct of the election. Observers are not permitted to handle or count ballots.
Most of the election problems related to observers in mail ballot elections stem from not providing adequate or equal opportunity for observers to monitor all of the various steps of the election process.
BallotPoint simplifies the Observer’s role by providing Observers, as identified by the union, with an Observer identification and password that allows them to observe the election process without providing them with the ability to interfere with the election process. Observers are provided controlled, secure, on-line access which enables them to monitor the election process from start to finish.
Unlike mail ballot elections there are no ballot envelopes to be stuffed, labeled or mailed, no ballots to be picked up or re-mailed and no returned ballots to be picked up and transported to the tally location. The role of Observers is greatly simplified all the while preserving the significance and importance of their responsibilities and contribution to the election process.
In short, BallotPoint makes the entire election process transparent to Observers without compromising the dictates of Title IV of the LMRDA.
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How can you be so confident that a BallotPoint election will survive a challenge that you will guarantee success?
BallotPoint has been tested, proven, and accepted with six (6) plus years of use by Unions across America. To date some 1,600 elections, over 750,000 votes cast, with one (1) challenge raised, and zero (0) successful challenges. The challenge was dismissed following review by the OLMS. In addition, BallotPoint has been used successfully in a DoL supervised rerun of an officer election.
BallotPoint has been tested and audited by some of our Union client’s independent accounting firms. In addition, the National Mediation Board has on a number of occasions, conducted “mock” or test elections prior to adoption to satisfy themselves that BallotPoint is a bona fide, trustworthy system. In all instances of testing and auditing, BallotPoint was 100% reliable.
Recently we had an opportunity to sit down with representatives from the Department of Labor for an in-depth review of BallotPoint over a two-day period. It was clear from this meeting that BallotPoint is the most sophisticated and technically evolved election methodology that the Department of Labor has seen. We are continuing to engage the Department of Labor to make sure that they have a thorough and complete understanding of BallotPoint. At the same time, based on their review, their questions and our responses, we are confident that BallotPoint wholly complies with the dictates of Title IV of the LMRDA.
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Is BallotPoint only for officer elections?
BallotPoint has been used extensively by unions for contract ratifications and various other membership votes. The ease with which a contract ratification ballot can be constructed using BallotPoint and the reduced cycle time of enabling voters to access the process remotely by telephone or Internet makes BallotPoint the best choice for conducting contract ratification votes.
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What do elections really cost and is BallotPoint cost effective?
All-in costs for mail ballot elections vary from union to union, but are generally in the range of $5.50 to $7.50 per member. With BallotPoint you can expect a range of 20 percent to 40 percent savings.
There are many variables in determining the cost per member. Direct costs are those costs that can be readily identified such as printing, envelopes, postage, CPA firm oversight, etc. Indirect costs are more difficult to identify but contribute to the cost per member none the less. Costs like lost time wages, Union administrative personnel time, travel or lodging expenses paid to Election Committee members, etc. would be considered as an indirect cost of conducting the election. It is important to identify and account for all costs in determining the real cost per member for an election.
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