Wikipedia:Election clerk

Election clerk is a user group that allows the user the ability to create, edit, and tally polls on the English Wikipedia using SecurePoll. (On other Wikimedia Foundation wikis, the role of an election clerk is often referred to as an "election admin").

Election clerks are responsible for setting up and managing polls used for administrator elections.

Any admin can assign themselves (or any other admin) to the election clerk user group. It cannot be given out to non-admins.

Permissions

Election clerks can create polls using SecurePoll. Once they create a poll, they can assign other election clerks to manage the poll. Clerks assigned to a poll may:

• Add and edit the questions and options in the poll before it begins.
• Add or remove other election clerks (including scrutineers) to the poll.
• Strike or unstrike votes, and see the strike history of individual votes.
• Generate tallies for the election. If the poll is encrypted, this requires a valid encryption key.

Election clerks also have access to the SecurePoll logs for all polls, whether or not they have been assigned to manage the poll.

These permissions are granted by the securepoll-create-poll and securepoll-edit-poll user rights.

Procedures

Encrypted polls

When creating an encrypted poll, the poll creator must generate a private/public key pair and configure the poll with the public key. The private key must be kept securely so it can be used to trigger a tally of the results once the vote has ended. For redundancy, there should be at least one other election clerk who is not a scrutineer with access to the private key.

See also

• Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 214 § Enabling SecurePoll elections with the electionadmin right – Village Pump discussion for the introduction of role
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/SecurePoll permissions proposal – proposal that outlines the technical aspects of introducing the election clerk user group.