What does it cost?
Prices are at the pricing page. Be sure to also understand the many opportunities to save.
I want to put a link on my website to the ballot at Skypunch Technology. What is the address?
This question is best answered at 3 Tips for Linking to the Ballot.
There was a bad email address on record for a voter. I changed it, but will they receive an email notice to vote?
Changing a voter’s email address will not trigger an email to that particular voter right at that moment. However, if you configured your election so that Skypunch emails voters, they will receive the notice on that date, assuming they have not already voted.
When Skypunch emails voters, what address is the email sent from?
For elections with fewer than 5000 voters Skypunch offers the ability to send up to three emails to voters during the course of an election. That email originates from the skypunch.tech domain. Skypunch achieves exceptionally high deliverability rates but it is still a good idea to instruct voters to whitelist email coming from that domain to ensure it gets past any spam filters and reaches the voter’s inbox. See more about Email Delivery Best Practices.
Not all our voters will want, or be able to vote electronically. How are these voters accommodated?
Skypunch affords the ability to generate a printer-friendly PDF document of the ballot which you may distribute to a voter. For details about generating and accepting paper ballots, see the Instruction Manual.
A voter says they did not receive an email to vote. How can this person be permitted to access the ballot?
First make sure the person’s included in the voter roster. Do this by logging into My Account and doing a voter lookup. If they aren’t included in the voter roster, add them, and inform them to visit the ballot at https://www.electionsonline.com/vote where they may retrieve their ballot access token log in to the ballot.
How do voters access the ballot?
If hosting the election on the Skypunch website as opposed to your own website, each voter will visit https://www.electionsonline.com/vote and request their ballot access token by email. Skypunch uses a highly secure, passwordless authentication model explained in detail at Passwordless Voter Authentication.
Is it possible to determine how a voter voted?
No. The de facto standard for conducting elections throughout the world is secret balloting which disassociates a voter from their ballot. Skypunch ensures secret balloting, but beware, not all systems do.
How is a voter prevented from double-voting?
At the moment a voter submits a ballot, he/she is flagged as having voted. This two-step process of submitting a ballot and being flagged as having voted is rolled into a single transaction so that submitting a ballot can only happen when a voter record has not been flagged as having voted. Once flagged as having voted, a voter may not access the ballot a second time.
Once a voter has cast a ballot, may he/she log back in and change his/her vote?
No. Voting with Skypunch is identical to voting in any other election in that once a person has voted, their vote is final.
Can Skypunch handle paper ballots?
Yes, the service does provide the ability to retrieve a paper ballot on demand for a specific voter. Details on handling the paper ballot procedure are in the Instruction Manual.
Can the ballot display different positions to different voters?
Using voter groups, special interest groups or a combination of the two, an election may be configured to display to a voter only the positions that voter is eligible to vote for. In fact, the dual options of voter groups and special interest groups, is the most powerful and flexible system available for displaying and reporting on various ballot configurations. More information is available at Voter Groups Versus Special Interest Groups.
Is the system mobile-friendly?
Yes. Employing responsive design, the ballot displays well on all devices.
Can we provide our voters with a single sign-on experience at our own website?
Yes, Skypunch leads the industry with its ability to integrate into other systems and there are a couple approaches that can be used to provide SSO.
- Passed authentication where a voter logs in to a client’s website and is then passed over to the ballot which is hosted on the Skypunch website. Their logged in state is preserved and they are not prompted to login a second time at Skypunch.
- Fully integrated where the ballot is consumed into a client’s website using web services so that it appears to be a native part of the client’s website with full control to modify the styling of the ballot.
Can the system handle voting for things like referendums as well as people?
Yes, see the sample ballot on the Skypunch website. The system has a special feature (Position Descriptions) that works particularly well for describing the details of things like referendums, bylaw changes and other things of that matter.
