Belka Admin Manual

This guide walks through the main workflows in the Belka admin dashboard.

Getting Started

If you or your organization would like to start using Belka, you need to contact Free Russians and request a new organization account. Please describe your case:

• Why would you like to try Belka out?
• What are you planning to use it for?
• How many voter participants you plan or expect to enroll?
• How many elections per month you plan to host?
• your organization administrator email address (will be used as user identifier for logging into the system).

In case of a positive decision you will receive an email message inviting your organization administrator to complete their account setup. Once they have done it, they will be able to sign into the administration dashboard.

Sign In To The Dashboard

Open the Belka admin dashboard and enter your organization-admin credentials.

After sign-in, Belka opens the main dashboard with the Elections workspace selected and your current user and organization visible in the header. If your user belongs to multiple organizations, you can switch between using the drop-down selector at the top.

Left side panel has a switch between your org elections and members.

Manage Organization Members

Open the Org tab to manage roles in the selected organization. These roles control who may administer the organization and who is included in an election with the Organization audience. They are separate from voter-group membership: a person may belong to a voter group without holding an organization role, and a group can give that person election visibility.

Your existing org members will be listed on the left.

Press the “Invite New” button to initiate adding a new org member.

Specify the Belka user to add to your org by filling in their registration email address and choose the desired role in your organization:

• Member - can see elections with the Organization audience and participate when admitted
• Election Admin - can create and run elections in your organization
• Org Admin - can add and remove organization members

Note: each next role includes permissions of the previous one: i.e. org admins can also manage elections, as well as participate in them as voters.

Press “Add Member” to complete the task.

You can later select any member in the sidebar to review their current role and update it when their responsibilities change, or remove the user from organization.

Create And Publish An Election

From the Elections tab, choose New Election:

On the right side you will see the new election’s properties:

Choose The Voter Audience

Use the Voter visibility section to choose who can discover the election in the voter app:

• Public — visible to everyone. Public elections cannot be associated with voter groups.
• Organization — visible to every organization member. Any selected regular voter group can also see it, including members who do not have an organization role.
• Private — visible only to the selected regular voter groups. Select at least one group; you can create a regular group from this form when needed.

All groups associated with an election belong to its organization. A group is an election-audience tool, not an organization role. The protected group used for election invitations is created automatically and is intentionally not listed as an editable regular group.

Specify description and questions

Fill in the title, description, dates, and ballot questions.

Title shall appear in the voter app elections list.

The description shall be shown in the details view once the election is selected by the user.

Start and end time are currently mostly advisory and are only there so votern could know the time window to show up to the election. Note that in future versions these will likely put real voting time constraints enforsed by the voting server.

Questions is the most important section - this is where you specify the content for the purpose of your poll or election.

A question may have 2 or more answering options. When allowed, a voter may chose several options - up to the specified number.

Save your new election

Once you’re done setting it up, press the “Create” button to save it. You can edit it later until you seal the election.

After the election is saved, you will see its setup overview with further actions available.

The Election Details header has a three-way switch for the selected election:

• Setup shows the election ID, title, description, schedule, and questions. Use Edit here to change the setup before the election is sealed; the button is no longer available afterwards.
• Audience contains two sections in the same details panel: an Applicants table for ordinary participation requests and an Invited voters table for invitation activity.
• Tally shows the turnout and final per-option results after the election has been tallied.

Each newly selected election opens in Setup. The switch stays next to the Election Details title, so all three views remain part of one selected-election workspace without extra panels.

Controling election lifecycle

The overview panel also contains a horizontal action row at the top which shows the currently available election controls in this order: Edit, Seal, Open Registration, and Delete. This set of controls depends on the current phase of your election:

• Initial setup;
• Voter registration;
• Voting;
• Tallying.

E.g. once you seal it, the registration phase is over and you will be able to use Start Voting and Stop Voting actions and once the voting is fully stopped, the Tally button will become available.

Note: sealing and deleting an election are irreversible and require confirmation.

To publish the election for voter applications, use Open Registration. Voters in the selected visibility scope will then be able to see your election in their application and apply for participation.

Manage Election Audience

Choose Audience to see who will participate in an election.

Review Ordinary Voter Applications

Once voters have seen your election and decided to apply for participation, you will see them in the Applicants table. Grant or deny participation using the Approve and Reject buttons. Only voters granted access will be able to submit their votes to the election.

Participation request status is displayed on the badge:

Invite Voters To An Election

You can actively reach out to your target audience by sending personal election invitations. To invite voters:

1. Select the election and choose Audience.

2. Select Invite voters next to the Invited voters section title. The section changes into a large paste area; enter one email address per line (or separate addresses with commas or semicolons), up to 50 recipients in one request.

   

3. Click Invite voters button under the input area. If it reports an error, correct the list and try again.

4. In a few moment invitees will receive notification emails. Check the displayed result and the Invited voters table.

Invitation shows the latest Belka-side activity: Added, Sent, or Error, with its local time and timezone. Added records when the invitation was just created; Sent means Belka handed its notification email to the configured mail transport, not that the recipient’s inbox received or was read it. Error status means that handoff failed.

To withdraw an offer before the voter accepts, select Revoke in that voter’s Invitation cell. Revocation is only possible before the voter has accepted or declined it.

Status shows the voter-facing result with the time it changed: No account includes an unverified account which cannot accept yet; Awaiting decision means the voter can accept or decline; Accepted grants admission; and Rejected means the invitation ended without acceptance, whether by the voter declining it, revocation, or election closure.

When an email needs a retry, select the ✉️ icon next to the Invitation column heading. Its hint is Retry failed delivery. It tries at most 50 eligible invitation emails for this election, refreshes the table when it finishes, and never sends rows already recorded as Sent.

Belka sends the notification email to verified accounts as well as accounts that still need to be created. Each email contains an individual link. After the recipient signs in (and completes first-run setup when applicable), the voter app opens the election and asks them to accept or decline. Accepting automatically adds that voter to the participant roster and issues the voting capability; the election administrator does not review another request. Declining or ignoring the email does not add the recipient to the roster.

Run The Election

When you decide that the registration phase is complete, Close Registration, Seal, and Start Voting. This will allow the voters to fill out and submit their electronic ballots.

You can stop and resume voting any time using the Setup action row.

Once the voting has started, you can monitor its progress in Setup, which shows the current status and the count of submitted ballots.

Tally And Review Results

Use Tally to calculate the final results, then choose the Tally view to review turnout and per-option counts.

NOTE: Once tallied, the election will no longer accept any more ballots!