Elections are occasionally carried out at the UWI to enable staff representation on various bodies. In ensuring transparency and validity of these elections, the relevant protocols and procedures of elections are followed. Given that these procedures were conducted manually, significant human input was required which made the process cumbersome at times. The e-Voting application was created to facilitate more efficient elections involving UWI employees. Development of this application was undertaken by MITS in collaboration with Office of the Campus Registrar (Secretariat).

The e-Voting application enables employees to nominate, second and vote for colleagues (nominees) in specified elections. It is also capable of running multiple elections concurrently. For each election, the program is able to store the list of nominated candidates and their respective proposers and seconders; the election results and the voters’ list.

However, nomination and voting procedures must adhere to specified rules. Some of these rules include:

• Only active employees on the PeopleSoft database are eligible to vote.
• A user can vote for one candidate in an election.
• A user can only vote once in an election that they are eligible to vote in.
• A user can only vote for validated nominated candidate who accepted the nomination.

Other guidelines are:

• A user must be on the voters’ list of an election in order to nominate a candidate.
• A user can only nominate one candidate for an election.
• The nominated candidate must be on the voters list for that election for the nomination to be accepted by the system.
•  The seconder must be on the voters’ list for that election.

This e-Voting application will significantly improve the efficiency with which elections are carried out given that it is automated. Further, since the e-Voting application is internet-based, it is more accessible to users. The e-Voting application was rolled out May 2014 and since it's launch there has been at least four (4) elections; with the last one done in Sept 2014.