Company
Tunji Oyeniran
We count the votes. You declare the winner.
A Pepvote result shows ranks, counts, and shares, with no winner badge. This is why the declaration stays with you.
Open a Pepvote result and look for the word "Winner". It is not there.
The race for President in our demo students' union election. Three candidates, each close to a quarter of 2,200 votes.
You see each candidate's rank, votes, and share. Nobody carries a badge. We left it out on purpose, and the result above shows why.
The same numbers can mean two results
David Ibe has the most votes for President. Is he the president?
- If the rule is "the most votes wins", yes.
- If the rule is "more than half of the votes cast", no. He has 26%. The top candidates go to a runoff.
The count is the same in each case. The outcome is different. Here is a simpler race, with three candidates and 100 votes.
Move the votes and watch three rules read the same count
President
Votes
- 45
- 35
- 20
If your rule says
Outcome
The candidate with the most votes wins
Ada wins
45 votes is more than any other candidate has.
A winner needs more than half of the votes cast
Runoff: Ada and Bola
Nobody has more than half of the 100 votes cast. 51 would be enough.
A winner needs more than half of all 150 members
No winner yet
A winner needs 76 of the 150 members. The highest count is 45.
100 votes cast. 150 members in the body.
Any software that prints "Elected" beside Ada has picked a rule for you.
Rules that software cannot see
A count is arithmetic. A declaration is a judgment under your constitution. That judgment often uses facts that are not on the ballot.
- Quorum. Was the meeting large enough for the vote to stand?
- Thresholds. Does this office need a simple majority, or two-thirds?
- Ties. Does the chair have a casting vote? Do you draw lots, or vote again?
- Eligibility. Was a candidate disqualified after the ballot was printed?
- Challenges. Does your body allow a period for objections before the result is final?
We could add a setting for each of these. Then one day the settings would be wrong for an event, and a screen would announce a winner your committee had not declared. In an election, a wrong announcement does more harm than a late one.
What Pepvote gives you instead
The job of the software is to count honestly and show its work.
- Counts and shares for each candidate, in rank order.
- Turnout, so that you can check quorum yourself.
- A PDF of the result, ready to print and sign.
- A confirmation code for each voter, so that anyone can check that their own ballot was recorded as cast.
A tie is shown as a tie. Pepvote does not break it for you.
Where a ranked count is different
Ranked choice is the one place where the count names a candidate. Instant-runoff (IRV) and single transferable vote (STV) are counting rules with a threshold built in. The count ends when a candidate passes it. So a ranked result says which candidate the count elected and in which round, and it shows every round that led there.
A ranked result. The outcome comes from the rule you chose for the position, and each round is there to check.
That is still arithmetic under a rule you picked for that position. Quorum, eligibility, and objections are still yours to judge.
The signature belongs to a person
At the ARD UCH election in 2018, the election committee and the agents checked the result first. Then the election chairman and the head of the Pepvote team signed the printed copy. Only after that was the election declared free and fair. You can read that story in the archive.
That order is still correct. The system counts. People verify. One accountable person from the committee or board declares.
So when voting ends, download the result, check it against your rules, and announce it in your own words. We will make sure the numbers under that announcement are right.
See a full result on the demo, or read more about live results.