Wikipedia:Administrator elections/SecurePoll permissions proposal Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrator_elections/SecurePoll_permissions_proposal

Consensus for this proposal was reached on the talk page around 2025-05-02. It was implemented on 2025-06-10.

Administrator elections had a successful trial and were recently authorized by an RFC to continue indefinitely.

In an attempt to make administrator elections more scalable (able to be held more often, to be held with less reliance on busy global partners such as the Wikimedia Foundation Trust & Safety Team and the Stewards), the SecurePoll software that is used for the elections is going to be installed locally instead of using votewiki.

There are some technical details related to user groups and user rights that need to be worked out for SecurePoll to be used locally, and we also need a procedure for granting election-related user groups to certain people. This proposal aims to provide a solution to these technical issues and clear the way for future administrator elections to be held without technical barriers or complex bureaucracy.

• ☑ Create a user group called Election Clerk (electionclerk), that will contain the following user rights: securepoll-create-poll, securepoll-edit-poll (via groupOverrides).^[1] This will allow:
  • Anyone in the group to create a poll, and
  • Anyone in the group who is added to a specific poll to edit that poll.
    • Note: in SecurePoll, once a poll has begun, most poll editing is disabled, including by Election Clerks. This ensures that the poll remains secure. The only fields that can be edited once a poll starts are "Return-to URL" and "Admins" (i.e. changing which Election Clerks have access to that poll).
• ☑ Add user rights securepoll-create-poll, securepoll-edit-poll, and securepoll-view-voter-pii to the CheckUsers user group (via groupOverrides). This will allow them to scrutineer polls that they have been added to.^[2]
• ☑ Allow Administrators to add and remove people from the Election Clerks user group (via $wgAddGroups, $wgRemoveGroups)

• ☑ Create MediaWiki:Group-electionclerk containing the text "Election clerks"
• ☑ Create MediaWiki:Group-electionclerk-member containing the text "election clerk"
• ☑ Create MediaWiki:Grouppage-electionclerk containing the text "Wikipedia:Election clerk"

• The Election Clerk right can be assigned by any Administrator to themselves or to another Administrator.
  • Election Clerk is intended for users involved in managing elections processes such as administrator elections and arbitration committee elections. It does not need to be given out widely.
  • It will not be requestable at WP:PERM.
  • It does not need to be revoked upon completion of the election.
  • Administrators may not assign this user group to non-Administrators.^[3]

• ☑ The page Wikipedia:Administrators will be updated to document this.
• ☑ The page Wikipedia:CheckUser will be updated to document this.
• ☑ The page Wikipedia:Election clerk will be created to document this.
• ☑ The page Wikipedia:User access levels will be updated to document this.

Notification of the talk page discussion that authorized this proposal focused on groups directly affected.

• Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard
• Wikipedia talk:CheckUser
• Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections

This proposal covers technical changes needed to implement the results of three major RfCs authorizing and modifying administrator elections. Therefore, current sentiment is to try to do this via talk page consensus. However, if consensus deems it necessary, an RFC about this proposal could be crafted and launched.

• phab:T378287 - Enable SecurePoll extension and electionadmin user group on enwiki
• Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections#Have CheckUsers be in charge of creating/editing SecurePoll polls?
• Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections/SecurePoll permissions proposal