Granicus® VoteCast™

Board voting system fully integrated with minutes annotation and streaming broadcasting

At the core of democracy is the vote—the right of the people to alter the course of their own government, elect their own leaders, and resolve their policy concerns. It is deeply-rooted in the traditions of municipal government where councils, commissions and other boards routinely vote on critical issues, ensuring public deliberations and the decision-making process are representative. However, in an age of highly complex public policies and compounding demands on government staff, the need to better manage public meetings and to more effectively maintain the public record in a way that protects the interests of the governing body and its constituents is greater than ever.

An electronic voting system for clerks and administrators, when seamlessly integrated with streaming media and minutes annotation solutions, dramatically improves meeting efficiency, increases public access, and strengthens government transparency by providing a solid platform that goes far beyond push-button controls for accepting votes.

Granicus VoteCast works hand-in-hand with Granicus MinutesMaker® to ease the administrative workload of clerks. They work together to automate the recording of council members’ legislative motions, votes and attendance from dais-based voting consoles into the clerk’s minutes of the meeting. Votes of each council member can be recorded from touch-screen panels, push button devices, or other input sources.

How It Works
Granicus VoteCast, a fully managed on-site appliance, is deeply rooted in the traditions of democratic rules of meeting order. By applying digital technology to Robert’s Rules of Order, standard and non-standard parliamentary procedures, and the requirements of each customer, it is comprehensive, flexible, secure and fundamentally simple to use.

Council members, clerks, chairpersons and non-voting members engage in the public meeting process in different ways. Granicus meets these needs with a single system that provides each meeting member with an interactive interface specifically designed for their role and responsibilities. The system is located in the council chambers, and the clerk centrally facilitates each member’s interaction with the system. Granicus VoteCast updates each member’s console—in real-time and according to the municipality’s parliamentary procedures.

Ensure consistency throughout the public debate with a dais-based voting system that provides consistent access across all council seats to voting controls, meeting agendas and all related information.
Maximize government transparency and accountability by creating a more accurate public record—automatically compiling an up-to-date, video, audio and text record of all public meetings and actions taken.
Shorten meetings and dramatically improve staff efficiency by vastly reducing the cost and administrative burden of preparing, conducting and recording public records and council votes.
Increase public access by offering a formal, historical record of issues raised, discussions, minutes, and votes cast—all fully annotated, searchable, indexed, and crosslinked with streaming video or audio recordings.
Automate public meetings with a system that seamlessly integrates your meetings with the rest of your legislative process, so data flows all the way through without any manual data entry or duplication of work.

With a no-nonsense user interface and straightforward simplicity, the software enables roll call, motion management, vote tallying, speaker management and paperless access to agenda packets. External displays including the vote totals and speaker time can be incorporated to extend relevant information to meeting attendees. Granicus VoteCast has a fully configurable interface to follow your process, bringing you a live, interactive and virtually hands-free experience.

Granicus VoteCast Workflow
Clerks can easily pre-load the meeting agenda, motions, attendees, speakers, and link to all related documents such as agenda packets, staff reports and others. This process empowers clerks to set up as much of the meeting as desired before it even begins, while still providing complete flexibility during the meeting itself. For governing bodies with an existing agenda management system, Granicus can provide a completely seamless integration. This allows you to continue using these systems for preparing and organizing agendas in advance of a public meeting, while leveraging the expertise of Granicus to continue those efficiency gains all the way through and after the meeting.

During meetings, Granicus VoteCast drives meeting action and enables the clerk to focus on facilitating the meeting instead of the administrative data entry for creating minutes. Clerks simply use an intuitive user interface to activate pre-loaded agenda items, or new items added on the fly, as they are discussed. This action automatically triggers real-time updates to the meeting chairperson and all meeting members’ consoles, informing them of the current item on the table or any action taken on that item. Clerks will always maintain the option to change the agenda items, speakers or other meeting elements during the meeting.

While the clerk facilitates the meeting, each board members’ interface may be configured to review agenda items and/or speaker lists during the meeting, including selecting or withdrawing a request to speak on an agenda item. The meeting chairperson is notified of this request and has the option to remove or call upon speakers from the queue. Granicus VoteCast also allows the clerk to manage or add speakers, and timers. In addition to requesting to speak, each board member has the ability to make or second a motion. Motioning automatically updates the chairperson and the clerk’s console, and is placed in the queue. Once a motion is seconded, he or she has the option to call for a vote.

With Granicus VoteCast, managing council votes could not be easier. At the click of a button, the chairperson or clerk can start and stop voting on an agenda item. Once voting has begun, meeting members cast their votes using their touch-screen console, voting push buttons or other input devices. Granicus VoteCast then automatically tabulates the results in real-time and presents it to the clerk, including vote details for each individual such as the vote type, count and percentage. The meeting clerk or facilitator always maintains the ability to override meeting action when needed.

Live vote results, current agenda items and speaker timers can be automatically displayed on TV monitors or projection systems in the chambers, with extensive display options. The system also ensures consistent access to all meeting actions and related information from each meeting participant’s console.

Following the meeting, clerks can clean up and publish meeting minutes automatically or manually, including the complete, detailed summary of attendance, motions, vote history and notes captured on individual agenda items. The precision, timeliness and efficiency of Granicus VoteCast significantly decreases the costs and staff time devoted to minutes accuracy and approval processes.

Total Granicus Integration: Comprehensive meeting management and public access
Granicus VoteCast seamlessly integrates with all Granicus solutions, providing unparalleled operational efficiency. Granicus VoteCast provides an entirely more efficient work process for clerks, while also adding the ability to build meeting minutes in real-time and publish them to the web as LinkedMinutes™—the most comprehensive minutes format used in government today. This emerging industry standard, invented by Granicus, is a total, encapsulated, fully dynamic archive of agendas, minutes and supporting documents—all indexed, keyword-searchable and cross-linked to streaming audio or video recordings of the meeting. Staff and constituents can not only view streaming video or audio broadcasts of the meeting, they can view the agenda, minutes and all related documents with a single click.