Skip to main content

Troubleshooting

This page covers the most common issues voters encounter and how to resolve them. Most problems have straightforward solutions and can be worked through in a few minutes. If you work through the relevant section and the issue persists, the last section of this page explains how to contact your administrator effectively so they can help as quickly as possible.

I did not receive a voting email​

Voting emails are sent automatically when the election opens. If you were expecting one and it has not arrived, start with these steps before contacting your administrator.

Check your spam or junk folder. Automated emails from voting platforms are sometimes filtered as spam, even when they are legitimate. Look for a message from [email protected] in your spam or junk folder and mark it as not spam if you find it there.

Check your other inbox tabs. If you use Gmail, the message may have landed in the Promotions or Updates tab rather than your main inbox. Outlook and other clients sometimes sort messages into focused and other inboxes. Look in all of them.

Search your email. Rather than scrolling through folders, use your email client's search function to look for [email protected] or the name of the election. This will find the message regardless of which folder it ended up in.

Check the timing. Voting emails go out when the election opens. If the election only just started, the message may still be in transit. Give it 10 to 15 minutes from the election start time before concluding it was not sent.

If you have checked all of the above and the email is genuinely not there, contact your election administrator. They can confirm which email address is registered for you in the system, correct it if it is wrong, and resend the link. Do not wait until close to the voting deadline to raise this, as administrators may need time to investigate and respond.

A link that returns an error or a blank page is usually explained by one of a handful of causes. Work through these before assuming something is technically broken.

The election has not started yet. Your invitation may have arrived before the voting window opened. Check the start time and date mentioned in your email and try the link again once voting is officially open.

The election is paused. Administrators can temporarily suspend voting for operational or procedural reasons. If the election is paused, the page will typically say so. Try again in a little while, or contact your administrator to find out when voting will resume.

The election has closed. Voting links stop working once the election window closes. If the deadline has passed, there is unfortunately nothing that can be done at this stage.

You have already voted. Your link is deactivated the instant your vote is submitted. If the link is showing as used but you do not remember voting, contact your administrator immediately. They can check whether a ballot was recorded for you and investigate if something irregular occurred.

A browser or network issue. Try refreshing the page first. If that does not help, copy the link and paste it into a fresh browser window rather than clicking it from the email again. Switch to a different browser, with Chrome being the most reliably compatible option. If you are on Wi Fi, try switching to mobile data, or vice versa. Sometimes network filtering or routing issues prevent specific pages from loading correctly.

If you have worked through all of these and the link still does not work, take a screenshot of the error message and send it to your administrator along with the browser and device you are using. The more detail you include, the faster they can diagnose the issue.

I made a mistake before submitting​

If you have not yet clicked Cast Final Vote on the last confirmation screen, your vote has not been submitted and you can still make changes. At any point during the ballot, you can click any selected option to deselect it, adjust your rankings, change your scores, or go back to an earlier contest to revise your answer. Nothing is locked until you confirm on that final screen.

On the review summary screen, if you notice something wrong, click Change Vote to return to the ballot. You can revisit and revise as many times as you need. There is no penalty for going back, and it is always better to take an extra minute to check than to submit something you are not happy with.

I already submitted but want to change my vote​

Submitted votes cannot be changed under any circumstances. Once you confirm on the final screen, your ballot is encrypted and locked in the system. This is an intentional and fundamental feature of the system, not a limitation that can be worked around. It exists to protect the integrity of the election and prevent any possibility of coercion or post submission tampering.

If you believe a genuine technical error occurred during submission, for example the page showed an error instead of a confirmation screen, contact your administrator. They cannot modify or retrieve your ballot, but they can check whether your vote was received, document the issue formally, and escalate if something truly unusual occurred.

I did not receive a confirmation email after voting​

After successfully submitting your vote, a confirmation email is sent to your registered address. This email is a secondary record and does not affect whether your vote was counted. The definitive proof of your participation is the digital vote fingerprint shown on the screen immediately after voting, which you can download as a receipt.

If the confirmation email has not arrived, wait 10 to 15 minutes. Transactional emails sometimes experience short delivery delays, particularly at peak times when many voters are submitting at once. Then check your spam folder, as confirmation emails can occasionally be filtered.

If after 20 minutes or so the email has still not arrived, contact your administrator. They can verify that your ballot was successfully recorded and resend the confirmation if needed. The absence of a confirmation email does not mean your vote was not counted, and you should not vote again on the assumption that something went wrong.

The page will not load or is very slow​

Performance issues are usually caused by browser, device, or network factors rather than anything on the voting platform itself. Try these steps in order:

Refresh the page. A simple reload resolves many temporary loading issues.

Close other tabs and applications. Browser tabs and running applications consume memory and processor time. If you have many tabs open or a video call running in the background, close them and try again.

Switch to a different browser. Chrome is the recommended browser for Electobox. If you are using something else and encountering issues, trying Chrome often resolves them.

Try a different network. If you are on Wi Fi, switch to mobile data. If you are on mobile data, switch to Wi Fi. Some networks have filtering rules or routing issues that affect specific sites without blocking them entirely.

Try from a different device. If you have access to another phone, tablet, or computer, try opening your link there. If it loads fine on a different device, the issue is with your primary device rather than the election system.

If the page loads but feels slow to respond when you click, this is often related to available memory on your device. Closing other apps and browser tabs usually helps. You do not need to rush your vote. You can take your time at any point during the ballot, and if performance is poor, waiting a little while and trying again at a less busy time is a completely reasonable option as long as you stay within the voting window.

Clicks and selections are not registering​

If you click a candidate or try to select an option and nothing happens, this is most commonly caused by a browser extension interfering with the voting page, or by JavaScript being disabled or blocked.

The quickest way to test this is to open your voting link in a private or incognito browsing window. Private windows disable most browser extensions by default, so if the selections work there but not in your regular window, an extension is almost certainly the cause. Common culprits include ad blockers, privacy tools, and script blocking extensions.

If selections work in incognito mode, you can either complete your vote there or try disabling your extensions one at a time in your regular window to identify which one is causing the conflict.

If selections do not work in incognito mode either, try switching to a different browser entirely. If the problem persists across multiple browsers and incognito mode, contact your administrator with details about your device, operating system, and browser version.

I voted on paper but received a voting email​

This is expected behavior and is not a problem. Voting emails are sent to all eligible voters when the election opens, before the administrator has had a chance to record who has checked in and voted in person at the polling station.

After you voted in person, your administrator will have checked you in through the admin panel, which deactivates your electronic voting link. If you try to use the link, it will show as already used. Do not attempt to use the link, as your paper ballot has already been counted and using the link as well would be a duplicate vote.

If you are unsure whether your in person ballot was properly recorded, contact your administrator to confirm.

Voting links are active for the duration of the election window. If the election is still open and your link has stopped working unexpectedly, the most likely reason is that your link was deactivated when you were checked in at the polling station for in person voting. If that was not the case, contact your administrator. They can investigate and issue a replacement link if the deactivation was an error.

If the election has already closed, the voting period has ended and unfortunately it is no longer possible to submit a ballot.

Contacting your administrator​

When reaching out about a voting issue, the more information you include the faster your administrator can help. Try to provide:

  • Your full name and the name of the election you are trying to vote in
  • A description of what you were trying to do when the issue occurred
  • The exact error message you saw, or a screenshot if you have one
  • The device type you were using (laptop, phone, tablet) and your browser name and version
  • The approximate time the issue occurred

Your administrator can typically respond within a few hours during business hours. If the issue is urgent and the voting deadline is approaching, use their phone number if one is listed in your voting invitation, as this will reach them faster than email.