Owners' Choice: a car show vote only entrants can cast

Many entrants say the award they care about is the one their fellow owners give them. Owners know what went into a build, so their pick often differs from the crowd's. Owners' Choice gives you that award without a separate ballot box or anyone counting slips by hand.

It suits a friendly award at a club or community show, alongside your judged classes and People's Choice. Read the limits below before you use it for anything more serious.

1. Open the show and click Edit to reach the Edit Show page.
2. Find the Voting & Judging card.
3. Switch on Owners' Choice.

Owners' Choice is available on Expert shows only, and not on virtual shows. The name is fixed. You can't rename it.

Once it is on, the show's People's Choice tab becomes Voting and has two sub-tabs, People's Choice and Owners' Choice. Owners' Choice uses the same categories as People's Choice (Single winner, Grouped categories or Per class), so you set those up once. The mode, categories and class assignments lock when either vote gets its first vote.

You can switch it off again with the same switch, but not once owners' votes exist. Reset them first (see below), or leave it on and close voting with Announce Results.

1. The owner scans the QR code on a car's dash card, or opens the car's page. It is the same page spectators use.
2. They enter the email address they registered their car with. Owners signed in to their free garage account see their account email already filled in. They can type a different one.
3. They click Vote in Owners' Choice.

Tell your entrants at check-in that they have a vote and which email to use. It is the one on their registration.

• The email must belong to a confirmed car in this show. Capital letters don't matter.
• Nobody can vote for their own car. This covers every car an owner has entered, because the check is on the email.
• One vote per owner per category. An owner with several cars is still one voter.
• The car voted for must be confirmed and in a class that is eligible for voting.
• The same rules apply to a vote staff enter for an owner.

When a vote is refused for being a non-owner or for being their own car, the owner sees the same message. That stops the form being used to find out who is registered.

Staff can enter a vote for an owner, for example an owner who has no phone or email handy. On theOwners' Choice sub-tab click Owners' vote desk, then:

1. Type the car number of the owner who is voting.
2. Type the car number they voted for.
3. Check the cars shown, then click Record vote.

There are two numbers because the vote has to come from an owner. The desk needs to know who is voting, so it can apply the rules: a confirmed car, not their own, one vote per category. If a rule is broken the desk refuses with a message. The desk lists recent votes, and you can remove a desk vote you entered wrongly. It is open until you announce results. Anyone who can change the show's voting settings can use it.

• The Owners' Choice sub-tab shows one leaderboard per category. Each total is split into phone and desk votes.
• Click Announce Results to close Owners' Choice voting. It is separate from People's Choice: closing one doesn't close the other. Unannounce reopens it.
• The show's own organiser can click Reset N votes to delete every Owners' Choice vote, phone and desk. This can't be undone and it is blocked once results are announced. People's Choice votes aren't touched.
• Clear judging data on the Edit Show page also deletes Owners' Choice votes and un-announces it. Use it to clear test votes before the show.
• Copying a show carries over whether Owners' Choice is on, not the votes.

• The Require voters to be near the show location check doesn't apply to Owners' Choice.
• Results appear on the Voting tab only. They are not on the Awards tab or the printed results, so add the award by hand if you want it announced or printed.
• There is no setting to rename it. It is always called Owners' Choice.

Not sure how it looks in practice? Open the live demo, or check the manual for the step-by-step version.