POLYAS Live Voting free test vote

POLYAS developed Live Voting so that you can conduct live voting that is legally compliant and barrier-free at any in-person event or at a virtual conference. You can also include voting for candidates in your live voting. After all, this is how the CDU held this year’s party conference with POLYAS. And now can test Live Voting free of charge. In this article you can find out how to use free test voting and which advantages the tool offers you.

At POLYAS, we have made it our business to strengthen trust in virtual voting. Since 2020, POLYAS Live Voting allows you to conduct your voting virtually. You can attend to your virtual meeting digitally and activate voting for your participants at the desired time. You can also quickly initiate new votes or send messages to your participants.

Free test voting

To help you be absolutely sure that your Live Voting is configured correctly and to give you an insight into the procedure of a POLYAS Live Voting, we started offering a free test voting this week.

As with the online voting, you now have the option of testing your live voting in advance with up to five test persons. You can use an exclusive beta version for testing that is analogous to our productive system. See the content and functions of the Live Voting for yourself and have more confidence in virtual voting.

Setup your Live Voting now in the POLYAS Online Voting Manager.

Transparent and trustworthy? – IT security aspects you should be aware of during virtual voting

Virtual voting is the “in” thing: For a year now the corona pandemic has forced associations and companies to explore new paths when holding general meetings or shareholders’ conferences. Video conference tools such as Zoom, GoToMeeting or Skype have become a part of everyday life. The main focus when conducting digital voting is on IT security and legal compliance. In just one example, Germany established the legal basis for virtual meetings with the COVID-19 law of March 2020. But what are the technical principles for securing virtual voting and making it transparent and trustworthy?

Four pillars of secure virtual voting

Confidentiality, availability, integrity and authentication – according to the German Federal Office for Security and Information Technology (BSI) these four characteristics are crucial for secure virtual events and voting. The BSI published a practical guide on this in 2020.

What’s behind these terms?

Confidentiality

All secret content of a virtual event or vote should stay secret and should only be transported over secure transmission channels. As little data should be collected as possible.

Availability

For all eligible voters to be able to cast their votes, the voting system, the transmission routes and the users’ end devices must be available during the voting period.

Integrity

External access to the voting system and the ballot papers must not be possible in any way. If the system behaves unexpectedly, the election organizer must be informed immediately in case a decision has to be made to abort the election.

Authentication

Every virtual event or voting must be protected by an authentication process. All participants authenticate themselves for voting by means of ID, password or (in Germany) the digital identity card.

Click here for the guideline on virtual meetings and voting from the BSI >

Increasing numbers of election organizers carry out their voting with POLYAS. Several hundred votes have already been conducted digitally. In January 2021, the CDU party in Germany allowed delegates at their digital party conference to vote by Live Voting. The POLYAS case study on the CDU party conference is available here.

Are you, too, ready to implement your democratic processes in a secure digital manner? Then start your free test voting now!