Election clerk is a user group that allows the user to create, edit, and tally polls on the English Wikipedia using SecurePoll. On other Wikimedia Foundation wikis, the role of election clerk is often referred to as "election administrator". Election clerks are responsible for setting up and managing polls used during administrator elections and the arbitration committee elections.
Any administrator can assign themselves (or any other administrator) to the election clerk user group. It is not allowed to be given out to non-admins.
Only election clerks can manage polls, via Special:SecurePoll.
Election clerks are able to perform the following tasks:
Election clerks assigned to a specific poll are able to perform the following actions on that poll only:
The associated user rights are securepoll-create-poll and securepoll-edit-poll.
When creating an encrypted poll, the poll creator must generate two public/private key pairs and configure the poll with those keys. The keys must be kept securely so they 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 keys.
There is community consensus to run local polls for administrator elections and for Arbitration Committee elections. Test polls should also be OK. Any other polls should be discussed with the community and a consensus reached in favour of secret voting, since secret polls sometimes run counter to English Wikipedia's core values of consensus and transparency.
The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) occasionally creates global polls for things such as movement charter ratification, universal code of conduct ratification, U4C member elections, and WMF board elections. These are hosted on vote.wikimedia.org (votewiki). A redirect poll is created on English Wikipedia that, when clicked, redirects the user to votewiki. WMF Trust & Safety creates these polls. English Wikipedia election clerks have no ability to create or edit these global polls.