Casting a ballot

Voting opens at the time the organiser set, or earlier if they start it by hand. Until then the poll page shows the schedule and a countdown, but no voting button.

Voting

Open the poll and choose Start voting. You get the ranking or approval interface described in Voting methods, along with any instructions the organiser wrote.

Submitting takes you to a receipt.

The receipt

The receipt confirms your ballot was recorded, shows it back to you, and tells you whether you can still change it.

It contains no totals of any kind. Not a leaderboard, not a count, not a hidden element to be revealed later. If results have not been published, the receipt says so and offers no link to them.

You can return to it at any time, through your dashboard or the poll itself.

Changing your ballot

If the organiser allowed ballot edits, you can revise until voting closes. Reopening the voting screen loads your existing ballot so you are editing, not starting over.

If they did not, your first ballot is final and the voting screen redirects you to your receipt.

Either way, editing replaces the whole ballot in one transaction. There is never a moment where half your old ranking sits beside half your new one.

One ballot per participant

Every participant can hold exactly one ballot per poll. This is enforced by a unique constraint in the database, not merely by application code, so it holds however requests arrive.

Double clicking does not create two ballots. If two submissions genuinely race, the database rejects the second insert, and the application completes it as an edit of the ballot the first one created. The outcome is the same as clicking once.

Who may vote

• Public poll. Anyone with the link, signed in, with a confirmed email address.
• Private poll. Only invited people, signed in, with a confirmed email address.

Reading a public poll needs no account; voting in one does. See Accounts and participation.

The poll owner may vote in their own poll. Their ballot is one ballot like any other, and it gives them no early sight of the result.

What happens when voting closes

Voting closes at the scheduled time, or when the organiser closes it early. After that:

• No new ballots, and no edits to existing ones.
• The result exists but nobody can see it, including the organiser.
• If the poll publishes automatically, results appear immediately. Otherwise they appear when the organiser publishes them.

If your access to a private poll is revoked after you voted, your ballot stays and still counts. You lose access to the poll and cannot change your ballot, but it is not deleted — removing it would let an organiser change a result by removing voters.