Online Polls

On OpaVote Poll creates a voting page where anyone with the address of the voting page can vote. Low security techniques (cookies) are used to prevent people from voting more than once. If you need higher security, you should use an OpaVote Election instead.

A Poll proceeds as follows:

  • the manager provides the details of the poll (title, candidates, etc.),
  • the manager starts the poll,
  • the manager shares the address of the voting page (e.g., via email or social media),
  • voters cast their votes,
  • the manager stops the poll and sees the poll results, and
  • the manager can optionally publish results to allow voters to see the results.

Polls have the same three stages as elections. Please read the instructions for elections before reading this section.

Editing

This step is the same as for an election, except there is one additional option.

  • Poll registration — Whether to try to restrict voters to a single vote. Note that the only way to truly restrict a voter to a single vote is to run an election.
    • none — Voters can vote as many times as they want.
    • cookie — A cookie is stored on the voter's computer to prevent multiple voting, but computer savvy voters may delete the cookie or use another browser to vote again.

Because you don't provide the list of voters for a poll, no emails are sent out. You need to advertise the poll on a website, via email, or via social media.

Voting

For polls, there are no actions you can take during the voting stage since you do not have a list of voters. When you would like to stop the poll and see the final results, click on the Stop Voting button.

End

At the end of a poll, you see the results (using bar charts) and download the ballots so you can count them independently. You can also publish results as described in the Election documentation.