Secure, Transparent Online Elections for Universities & Tertiary Institutions

High Direct Costs

Printing ballot papers, renting polling stations, hiring presiding officers, and transporting materials can cost UGX 2,000,000 to UGX 5,000,000 per election — every single year. For large institutions, the cost is even higher.

Low Voter Turnout

Students who are off-campus, in internships, or simply unable to queue at a physical polling station are disenfranchised. Physical elections typically see 20–35% turnout; online voting consistently achieves 60–85%.

Counting Errors & Delays

Manual counting is slow, error-prone, and opaque. Results often take 24–48 hours, during which disputes fester and trust erodes. A single miscounted ballot box can invalidate an entire position.

Disputes & Petitions

Without a tamper-evident audit trail, disputes are difficult to resolve. Losers claim irregularity, winners claim sour grapes, and the Electoral Commission is left mediating without evidence.

Limited Accessibility

Students with disabilities, students on exchange programmes, and evening-class students are systematically excluded by physical polling stations that are only open during business hours.

No Scalability

As your institution grows, physical voting costs scale linearly. Doubling the student body means doubling the ballot papers, polling stations, and presiding officers — with no improvement in security or transparency.

Secret Ballot by Design

Vote records cannot be linked to voters. Our architecture stores eligibility and ballot selections as separate data domains — the same principle recommended by NIST and the National Academies for election integrity. Not even our own engineers can connect a vote to a voter.

Single-Use Voting Tokens

Each eligible voter receives a unique, one-time credential delivered by email. The token expires the moment voting closes. No duplicate ballots, no credential sharing, no vote stuffing. Tokens are cryptographically random and impossible to guess.

Constitution-Aware AI

Upload your student council constitution. Our AI extracts positions, eligibility rules, voting procedures, and dispute windows — then the Electoral Commission confirms every rule before it takes effect. The AI advises; the EC decides.

Real-Time Turnout Monitoring

The Electoral Commission sees live turnout during voting — by faculty, by year, by constituency — so you can send targeted reminders to under-participating groups. Candidate-level results are never shown before polls close, preventing vote suppression.

Candidate Self-Confirmation

Each candidate receives a one-time link to proofread their own name, bio, photo, and slogan before the ballot is finalised. This eliminates the most common source of disputes — misspelt names and wrong photos — and gives candidates confidence in the process.

Branded Ballot with Letterhead

The digital ballot carries your institution's letterhead, logo, and colours. Voters see a familiar, official document — not a generic web form. The EC can recreate the letterhead from a scanned copy if a digital version is unavailable.

Certified Results & Audit Trail

Results are certified by the EC and published with a tamper-evident audit record. Every vote, every tally, and every certification is logged with timestamps and cryptographic hashes. Disputes can be investigated with evidence, not hearsay.

Dispute Window Management

The platform enforces the dispute window specified in your constitution. During the window, petitions can be filed; after it closes, results are final. This prevents endless disputes and gives winners a clear mandate.

Voter eligibility (who you are) and ballot selections (how you voted) are stored in separate, encrypted data domains. There is no database table, log file, or backup that connects a voter to their vote.

Voting tokens are generated using the Web Crypto API's cryptographically secure random number generator. Each token is 128 bits of entropy — the same standard used for banking authentication keys.

Every action — token issuance, vote cast, result tallied, certification signed — is recorded in an append-only audit log with SHA-256 hashes. Any attempt to modify a record changes its hash, making tampering immediately detectable.

Administrators access the Electoral Commission dashboard using WebAuthn biometric authentication (fingerprint or face recognition) with a password fallback. Sensitive actions — publishing results, sending notifications, exporting data — require step-up biometric confirmation.

If a biometric credential is copied to a second device, the platform detects the clone and blocks authentication from both. This prevents a stolen device from being used to compromise the election.

Admin sessions expire after 7 days (or 30 days if the device is remembered). Sensitive actions require re-verification. This limits the window of opportunity for a compromised session.

Token redemption, admin login, and API endpoints are rate-limited. After 5 failed admin login attempts, the account is locked for 15 minutes. This prevents automated attacks.

All communication uses HTTPS/TLS 1.2+. Data at rest is encrypted using platform-managed keys. Ballot selections are never logged in plain text, even in error logs.

Uganda PDPO Compliance

We follow the principles of the Data Protection and Privacy Act: lawful processing, purpose limitation, data minimisation, storage limitation, and security. Student data is used solely for election administration.

Data Minimisation

We collect only what is needed to run the election: name, student ID, email, faculty, and year. We do not collect phone numbers, addresses, or biometric data unless the institution explicitly provides them.

Purpose Limitation

Voter data is used exclusively for the election it was imported for. It is not used for marketing, shared with third parties, or retained beyond the election's dispute window plus a reasonable archival period.

Right to Access & Rectification

Students can request a copy of their personal data and corrections to inaccurate information. The EC can process these requests directly through the platform.

Secure Data Deletion

After the dispute window closes and results are certified, the institution can request deletion of all voter personal data. Ballot selections (already separated from identity) are retained for audit purposes.

Institutional Data Ownership

Your institution owns its data. We are the processor; you are the controller. We never use your student data to train AI models, improve our products, or for any purpose beyond running your elections.

A 2-hour orientation session for the Electoral Commission covering the dashboard, voter import, candidate management, ballot design, and results certification. Conducted in person or via video call.

Step-by-step guides, video tutorials, and a printable quick-reference card for the EC. Available in English; translations can be provided on request for large institutions.

Email support with a 4-hour response time during business hours. Phone support for urgent issues on election day. Annual plan includes priority support with a 1-hour response time.

For an additional fee, a CampusVote team member is available throughout voting hours to assist with any technical issues, monitor turnout, and help with real-time reminders.

After each election, we provide a detailed report including turnout analysis, demographic breakdowns, timing data, and recommendations for improving future elections.

An online knowledge base with articles on every feature, common issues, and best practices. Updated regularly based on questions we receive from institutions.