Frequently Asked Questions

What can I do with OpaVote?

OpaVote allows you to run elections online. You provide the information about your election (candidate names, etc.) and the email addresses of the voters, and OpaVote takes care of the rest. OpaVote sends each voter a private link that allows the voter to cast his or her vote. You can also run polls (where anyone can vote) and count ballots that you have collected in other ways (e.g. paper ballots).

How many voters can I have?

OpaVote can currently support up to one million voters per election.

What is the difference between an election and a poll?

An election has a voter list, sends emails to voters, and ensures each voter can vote only once. A poll does not have a voter list and allows anyone to vote. For a poll, you must publicize the voting link to allow people to vote (e.g., on a web page or via email).

How do I get help?

To see how OpaVote works, you can try this example poll. You can also create an election, use your own email address as a single voter, and try out the whole process from beginning to end. Paid support is also available. See our support page for more information.

I made a mistake. Can you fix it?

Because of the extremely low prices, technical support is not included. Please run a test election to make sure you understand the process and do not make any mistakes for a real election. Information about paid support is available on our support page.

A voter made a mistake. Can you remove a vote?

No. All votes are anonymous. After a vote is cast, it is not possible to determine which voter it belongs to, and therefore it cannot be removed.

Are elections secure?

Yes. Each voter is sent a secret code that is required in order to cast a vote. Encryption (SSL) is used for casting votes in elections.

What about privacy?

In order to run an election with OpaVote, you must provide an email address of the election manager and each voter. OpaVote uses this information only for purposes of running the election, and after the election manager deletes the election, all email addresses, votes, and election results are permanently deleted from OpaVote. OpaVote may publicize the fact that your organization used OpaVote along with information about your election (e.g., date and election title). See our privacy policy for more information.

Are the votes anonymous?

Yes, by default, each vote is stored independent of the voters, so votes cannot be linked back to voters. We also have a non-anonymous voting option if you need that.

For an election, what if two voters share an email address or a voter does not have an email address?

OpaVote allows you to create "code" voters in addition to email voters. A unique, secret code is created for each code voter, and you can provide the secret code to the voter to allow him or her to vote.