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.

Poll Widget

The poll widget is an advanced feature that is not needed for most polls. You'll also need to have web developer skills to implement our poll widget.

You can embed an OpaVote poll widget on your own website to allow people to vote on your website. The poll widget initially shows a ranked ballot where the candidates can be ranked in any order. After clicking the "Vote" button, the vote will be processed and the results of the poll so far will be shown. Here is an example of the poll widget in action.

The poll widget works with any poll with one contest and "require full" set to "no". You can use our favorite ice cream flavor polls with a ranked simple ballot or a ranked enhanced ballot. We also have an STV poll that you can use, or you can create your own polls.

To add a poll widget to your website, you need to do the following three things.

Add two lines to the HEAD

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="{{ BASE_URL }}/static/css/widget.css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.gstatic.com/charts/loader.js"></script>

If you would like different styles, you can copy widget.css to your own site and modify it.

Add widget html to the BODY

The following will display the widget on your web page. Everything is required except the h2 tags that you can change or remove. You can add HTML wherever you like and/or add CSS to suit your needs.

When a voter first visits your page, the "opavote-voting" div is shown and the "opavote-voted" div is hidden. After a vote is cast, the "opavote-voting" shows a message saying that the vote was received and the "opavote-voted" div is shown.

<div id="opavote-widget">

<div id="opavote-voting">
<h2>Poll Title</h2>
<div id="ballot-0"></div>
<div id="vote-button"></div>
</div>

<div id="opavote-voted">
<h2>Poll Results</h2>
<div id="opavote-results"></div>
</div>

<div id="opavote-logo">
<p>Create your own poll with <a href="{{ BASE_URL }}">OpaVote</a></p>
</div>

</div>

Add scripts to end of BODY

<script type="text/javascript" src="{{ BASE_URL }}/static/js/widget.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">election.widget(6082899191267328);</script>

The last line above includes the ID of the poll, and you can change this to any poll ID you like.

We are working increasing the flexibility of the poll widget (e.g., allowing multiple contests). Please let us know if you have any suggestions for improving the poll widget.