How ASCCC Makes Leadership Decisions in a Hybrid Conference Environment

The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) provides leadership, empowerment, and voice to over 60,000 faculty members across California's community colleges.

RankedVote spoke with Krystinne Mica, Executive Director, about how ASCCC uses ranked choice voting to help figure out its governance structure.

Challenge

The ASCCC convenes its delegates every year to select its governing body (President, Treasurer, Secretary, etc.). Historically, this had been done on paper and counted by hand. But, a few scenarios in 2022 combined to make for an interesting challenge:

1. The ASCCC had recently adopted ranked choice voting as the way it ran its elections.
2. Easing pandemic restrictions meant that the conference would be a hybrid event — with members attending both online and in-person.
3. A previous vendor stated that they would not be able to provide timely results (think days, not minutes)

This meant that they needed to find something new. And fast.

The announcement for the ASCCC's Hybrid Event

Solution

The ASCCC turned to RankedVote to meet the challenge. A couple capabilities in particular stood out: automatic ranked choice calculations and the easy-to-use interface.

Automatic Calculations

RankedVote is laser-focused on being the best way to experience ranked choice voting online. It goes to great lengths to make sure that results are generated quickly, visualized dynamically, and explained automatically.

This meant that not only were the event organizers freed from manual calculations, but that they could more deeply understand what happened in their elections.

Easy to Use on Any Device

With attendees representing diverse levels of tech-savviness, it was critical to the ASCCC that the voting platform be one that just worked.

"We needed an interface that was simple to use and didn't make people feel like 'Oh my gosh! I have to learn another piece of software,'" said Mica. "When we were looking at apps, RankedVote was the most clear."

RankedVote works on any device with a modern browser and an internet connection. There's no app to install. All voters use the same link to cast their votes. This makes it easy to share quickly with both in-person and online event participants.

"We had this great climax of hundreds of people voting over the course of three minutes. Then, the results are right there. You're not spending the whole day tabulating."Krystinne mica
Executive Director, ASCCC

Results

The ASCCC successfully elected their governing body with a smoother process than years past even though they were in a complex hybrid event scenario.

With RankedVote, the ASCCC also ended up with...

Over 100 Delegates Voting in Minutes

When it was voting time at the event, the vote link was shared with all participants. About one third were in-person and the rest were virtual. Votes streamed in. Not a single delegate had an issue with the process.

Vastly Streamlined Event

The instant result calculations allowed the event to keep humming along without interruption. The previous process involved time-intensive hand calculations. Now, the ASCCC could move on to other important issues while the delegates were assembled.

Krystinne's Tips