How to Vote

Someone has sent you a link to vote. This page explains what happens next.

The short version: open the link, fill in the ballot, press submit. It just takes a couple of minutes.

Getting to your ballot

How you reach the ballot depends on how the election was set up.

You received an email with a button or link. That link is yours — it identifies you as a voter, so don’t forward it to anyone else. If you can’t find the email, check your spam folder before asking for a new one.

You were given a shared link and a voter ID. Open the link and enter your ID on the voting page.

You were given a link with nothing else. It’s an open election, so anyone with the link can vote. Just open it.

If your link doesn’t work, or you never received one, contact whoever is running the election. Many elections publish a support email on the election page for exactly this.

Filling in the ballot

What you’re asked to do depends on the method the organiser chose, just follow the ballot instructions.

Score the candidates 0 to 5 (STAR Voting). Give every candidate a score. 5 means you support them most, 0 means not at all. You are not ranking them — you can give two candidates the same score if you genuinely like them the same, and doing so does not waste your vote.

Tick everyone you’d be happy with (Approval Voting). Tick as many or as few as you like. Ticking a second candidate doesn’t take anything away from your first.

Put them in order (Ranked Choice Voting, Ranked Robin, or STV). Rank them from favourite downwards. You don’t have to rank everyone — rank as many as you have an opinion about. Some elections cap how many you can rank; the ballot will say.

Pick one (Choose One). Exactly one.

A few things you might notice, all of them normal:

The candidates may be in a different order than on someone else’s ballot. Randomised order is on by default, so that being listed first isn’t an advantage.
You may have to confirm you’ve read the instructions before the submit button becomes available.
You can leave a candidate blank. A blank is identical to giving a 0 or whatever the minimum support would be for that voting method.

Submitting

Press submit and you’ll get a confirmation screen showing what you sent. If something looks wrong, go back before you submit — it’s much easier than fixing it afterwards.

If the election was set up with email invitations, you’ll also get a receipt by email confirming your ballot was counted.

“The election is still in test mode”

If you see a warning that the election is in test mode, the organiser is trying things out and hasn’t started the real election yet.

Your ballot will not count, and it will be deleted when the real election opens. That’s expected, not a mistake. You’ll be asked to vote again once it starts — so keep the invitation.

If something goes wrong

The link says you’ve already voted. Someone using your link has already submitted a ballot, or you submitted one and forgot. Contact the organiser — they can check.

The page says the election isn’t open. Voting either hasn’t started or has finished. Check the dates on the election page.

You made a mistake and already submitted. Whether you can fix it depends on a setting the organiser chose — see After You Vote.

Anything else. Contact whoever is running the election. BetterVoting hosts the election, but the organiser owns it, sets the rules, and is the only one who can change anything about it.

After You Vote — your receipt, changing your vote, and when results appear
Ties — what happens if two candidates finish level