A hybrid solution for telephone voting
Simply Voting’s telephone voting system provides voters with audio ballots that may be submitted using a touch-tone dialpad. An excellent solution for offering your voters an alternative voting channel.
How telephone voting works
A toll-free or local number is provisioned and connected to your account. Eligible voters are sent instructions containing the phone number to call as well as their credentials for authentication by email and/or postal mailing.
Voters then call the designated phone number and are prompted to authenticate their identity. The voter enters their credentials using a touch-tone dialpad and the system checks whether they have not yet voted. If that is the case, the voter is prompted to select from the options of each question, one question at a time, and finally to confirm their choices.
When the voter confirms a ballot, the results are encrypted and stored anonymously. The voter is issued a receipt (accessible only online) and is now blocked from voting for this election again. Since Simply Voting never allows a voter to vote twice, telephone voting may proceed at the same time as internet voting.
For self-service elections, voice prompts are generated automatically by the voting system’s realistic text-to-speech engine. For managed elections, voice prompts are recorded by a professional voice artist for an ultimate voter experience. Either way, the system makes a good impression and is easy to comprehend.
Benefits and Features
No Internet Required
An advantage of telephone voting is that it does not require a computer or internet access to vote. Any touch-tone phone will do.
Toll-Free Numbers
Simply Voting can assign a local phone number for voters to call, or in North America, a toll-free phone number.
One Vote Per Voter
It is impossible to vote twice, even if you try casting internet and telephone ballots at the same time.
Flexible Voting Rules
Most features of internet voting are supported by the telephone voting system, including many types of voting rules and ballot questions, segmentation, and vote weight.
Verifiable Voting
A printable receipt is provided to each voter. Should you opt to publish the final results, anyone will be able to download a file containing votes and receipt codes, allowing voters to verify that their vote was recorded as intended.
Anonymous & Secure
Votes are anonymous. Election administrators and fellow voters will never know how a voter has voted. The voting system is designed around security from the ground-up. Learn more on our Security page.
Take the hassle out of organizing your elections.
A telephone voting system you can trust
Our customers appreciate the hard work we’ve put in to both the software and service. Here are some of the things they have said about us.
This was a terrific application. It worked exactly as I wanted it; it was very easy to use; directions were excellent… overall an excellent application, and I would recommend it to anyone and would use it again.
I love your system and your customer service is amazing!!!
We will totally use you again and I will recommend you to friends and colleagues!
Our online voting experience was better than good. We increased our voter turnout from 16% to over 36%. The feedback from our members was very positive. I will be definitely recommending Simply Voting to anyone who wants to go to online voting.
Even when I had a question, your customer service support was fast and excellent. We plan on using Simply Voting again for other club voting processes because it worked out very well for us.
Just want you to know how pleased the entire Board and membership were with this online voting experience. You made it simple to navigate, easy to set up and completely impervious to “monkey business”!
Your voting system and customer service are EXCELLENT! You have thought of everything to make it easy for admins to set up and conduct an election. I’m having a hard time thinking of anything you could do different.
There is a sense from users that the electronic voting went so well, that we will be looking to utilize it fully again in the future for other mandates that we are part of.
The election itself ran without incident or complaint, and without any need for me to do anything after initial setting up. We will be using your service again next time we are holding an online ballot.
We found it to be extremely convenient, cost effective and was very well received by all of the members that utilized it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if a voter’s call is disconnected?
If a call is interrupted in the middle of voting, a voter may dial the telephone voting number again, re-authenticate, and access a brand new audio ballot. Any previous selections were not saved if the interruption occurred before ballot submission.
Can a voter cast two votes - one internet, and one telephone?
This is impossible. Once the ballot is cast using either method, all other voting sessions immediately stop because the voter is no longer eligible. Internet and telephone voting share the same underlying software and database.
Is there a separate tally?
Simply Voting will provide the organizer with a unified tally of internet and telephone ballots. However, statistics are available to break down turnout by voting method.
What is the capacity of the telephone voting system?
Thanks to our telephony provider’s flexible technology, Simply Voting can easily scale up or down the number of dedicated ports needed, and the telephone voting system can handle spikes well beyond that number. As a matter of policy, Simply Voting always maintains enough ports to handle all eligible voters choosing the telephone voting method in hybrid elections. This over-allocation of resources ensures our telephone voting system is always running at peak performance, even if there is an unexpected shift towards telephone voting.
Give your voters the choice of voting method.
Whether you prefer a self-service or managed solution, add telephone voting to your next election. Get in touch now for a no-obligation quote.