Compare
Digital versus paper, honestly.
Digital voting is not automatically better. It is better at some things, worse at others, and there are elections we would tell you to run on paper.
A hall count compared with PollGuard
| Hall count / spreadsheet | PollGuard | |
|---|---|---|
| Who may vote | A printed list, annotated on the day | Register frozen at a qualifying date, with verification and recorded eligibility decisions |
| Proving identity | Recognition, or a membership card | Document check plus live face match, reviewed by your officials |
| Reaching distant members | They travel, or they do not vote | Any member with a phone or browser, wherever they are |
| Double voting | Prevented by whoever is watching the door | One ballot per position enforced by the system |
| Turnout visibility | Unknown until counting | Live, so you can act before the poll closes |
| Counting | Manual, slow, and observed by whoever stayed | Tallied automatically per position with anomaly checks |
| Voter assurance | None once the ballot is in the box | A receipt each voter can independently check |
| The record afterwards | Minutes, and physical ballots if they survive | Exportable register, ballot record, tally, disputes and certification |
| Cost at scale | Venue, printing, transport and staff, every cycle | An annual licence plus a per-voter engagement fee |
When paper is still the right answer
We would rather you ran a good paper election than a bad digital one. Consider staying on paper, or running a hybrid, if:
- Your rules require a counting method we do not support — for example single-transferable-vote or multi-seat proportional counting.
- You need a cryptographically guaranteed secret ballot or independent recountability by a third party. Our secrecy is operational and our verifiability is per-voter; if that is not enough, paper with good scrutiny may serve you better today.
- Your membership genuinely cannot get online and you cannot staff supervised stations.
- You have days, not weeks. A register cannot be cleaned and members cannot be verified responsibly in a rush.
- Trust in the process is already broken and introducing an unfamiliar system would become the new grievance. Fix the governance first.
A hybrid is often the practical answer: digital for the register, verification, notice and the record, with supervised in-person voting for members who need it.
Not sure which fits your election?
Describe it to us. If digital is the wrong answer for you this cycle, we will tell you.