After You Vote

You’ve submitted your ballot. This page answers the three things voters ask next.

Can I change my vote?

It depends on a setting the organiser chose, and the app tells you which one applies. After submitting, you’ll see one of these:

What you see What it means
“You can update your ballot using the link in your email receipt” Yes — reopen the link from your receipt and submit again. Your new ballot replaces the old one.
“This election does not support ballot updates. All ballots are final once submitted” No. Your ballot is final.
“The election has closed. All ballots are final” Voting has finished, so no — regardless of the setting.

If updates are allowed, you can change your vote as many times as you like while the election is open. Only your most recent ballot is counted — earlier ones are replaced, not added.

Changing your vote needs the link from your email receipt. If you deleted the receipt, ask the organiser to send it again — they can look up your voting link.

Did my vote actually count?

If the election used email invitations, you’ll get a receipt confirming your ballot was counted. It also gives you the option to view the ballot you submitted, so you can check it’s what you meant.

If you voted through a shared link without email, there’s no receipt to send — the confirmation screen you saw immediately after submitting is your confirmation.

If you’re unsure whether your ballot went through, you can open the voting link again. It’ll indicate if a vote has already been cast from that link or device depending on the election security settings.

When will I see results?

That’s up to the organiser too.

Some elections show preliminary results while voting is still open. If that’s turned on, you’ll see them on the election page as soon as you’ve voted. They are exactly what they say — preliminary. They change as more ballots come in, and the candidate ahead early is often not the one who wins. See Preliminary Results.

Some elections show nothing until voting closes. This is common for higher-stakes elections, precisely so that early numbers don’t influence people who haven’t voted yet.

Some elections don’t publish results publicly at all. The organiser sees them and decides what to share. If you were expecting results and there’s no link, ask them.

Once results are published, the page shows more than just the winner — including how the count actually worked, round by round. If you want to understand why someone won rather than just who, that detail is worth reading.

Who can see how I voted?

Nobody can see how you voted — including the person running the election. That isn’t a setting they chose; it’s built in. When ballots are handed over for viewing, your identity is stripped from them first, and they’re deliberately shuffled so the order can’t be matched against who voted when.

What an organiser can see, in an election with a voter list, is who has voted — not how. That’s what makes reminders to non-voters possible.

Two limits worth knowing. If you got an email receipt, that link shows your own ballot, so anyone with access to your inbox could see it too. And in a very small race — three voters, a 3–0 result — everyone can work out everyone’s vote by arithmetic. No system can prevent that.

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