Blog

March 17th, 2025 by David Simms

Categorized as: Product Development

Woman interacts with a computer.

Candidates have long been able to input their own biographies into the system. Election managers have also long been able to input biographies on behalf of candidates. How that is done has now changed. While this could just about go without an announcement given how seamless the changes are from a user experience perspective, it’s […]

March 7th, 2025 by David Simms

Categorized as: Election Tips, Increase Voter Turnout

Tips for Linking to the Ballot

One of the best practices for increasing voter turnout requires creating a link on your own web site that takes voters directly to the ballot login page. That’s a simple enough thing to do, but there are some best practices and tips that can be employed to ensure this link works to maximum effectiveness. For […]

February 7th, 2025 by David Simms

Categorized as: Product Development

Testing Ballot Setup

There has been a significant change in the underlying technology of the Skypunch voting system that clients should know about as it impacts the verification of ballots. For years, the technology at the heart of the Skypunch solution has been a trade secret and not disclosed publicly. That technology, introduced to the market by AWS […]

October 3rd, 2024 by David Simms

Categorized as: Election Tips

7 Don'ts for Starting an Election

I’ve seen this. A client’s election begins and they do some really proper things such as: Unfortunately, I’ve seen times when the beauty of these things almost gets lost in a clutter of aimless and horribly verbose text surrounding it. I’ll not name names or even copy and paste bad examples here (at least not […]

August 14th, 2024 by David Simms

Categorized as: Company News, Other

Cybersecurity

As written about previously at WVU to Perform Cybersecurity Work on Skypunch, WVU (West Virginia University) regularly performs various red team exercises against the Skypunch Technology online voting system. Less than a year after that activity began, I am happy to report that in partnership with the Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network (JFHQ-DODIN) […]

May 24th, 2024 by David Simms

Categorized as: Other, Tech Tips

Blog

WordPress, the enormously popular Content Management System, is supported by a collection of tools and practices aimed at enhancing its security. But secure is a relative term and while those tools and practices can help make WordPress more secure than its default installation, cybersecurity professionals still cringe at the thought of using it on high-security […]

March 6th, 2024 by David Simms

Categorized as: Product Development, Time Savers

Using the Nomination Engine

Before any election, candidates must be chosen. Instead of treating the candidate nomination process as detached from the actual election, the Skypunch Nomination Engine treats it as an inherent part of the election. Nominated candidates—along with any biographical information—flow right into the final election setup, thereby eliminating a two-phase approach and further streamlining the overall election administration […]

February 8th, 2024 by David Simms

Categorized as: Product Development

API Authentication Update

Right off, this is applicable to those clients whose voters login at a third-party website (for example, the website owned by the organization conducting the election) and are then passed over to the Skypunch website where the voter may view and submit a ballot without being prompted to login again. This is referred to as […]

January 3rd, 2024 by David Simms

Categorized as: Election Tips

Optimize Candidate Photos

When including candidate photos on the ballot, photos should be sized to 100 pixels wide x 120 pixels tall. This guarantees the images will have small file sizes and load very fast on the ballot and appear nicely sized and positioned inside the candidate biography window without pushing the biography itself out of the way […]

December 6th, 2023 by David Simms

Categorized as: Election Tips

How to Provider Voter Support

Despite all that is done to ensure the voting experience is as simple as possible, there will inevitably be the occasional request for assistance from a voter. When a voter contacts you it is most preferable to them to receive resolution to their question right then and there without you having to in turn contact […]

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