Every feature, in every tier
Every paid election includes every capability on this list, and tiers set the voter count and nothing else: the $4.99 election and the 5,000-voter election run identical software. The free election of up to 25 voters includes all of it too, with one exception we state plainly: text messaging is included from the first paid tier, because every text costs carrier fees on send. Nothing else is unlocked by a bigger tier. The only extras are hard costs billed at use: government-ID checks per voter, mailed ballot packets per packet, and a custom domain.
Put any competitor's published feature list beside this one. Our comparisons say plainly where they win.
Ballot building
- Nine question types: single choice, multiple choice, ranked choice, cumulative, approval, scored, yes/no, rating, open text
- Ranked choice counted four ways: instant runoff (RCV), single transferable vote (Scottish WIGM, Meek, or ERS97 rules), Borda count (classic or Dowdall points), or Condorcet (Schulze, ranked pairs, or minimax), with every round and transfer stage published
- Approval voting (approve any number, most approvals win) and scored voting (0-10 scale, highest total wins)
- Cumulative voting: each voter spreads a pool of votes across candidates, with per-share pools for co-ops
- Candidate elections with photos and candidate statements on the ballot
- Rich-text descriptions with photos and attached documents
- A template library written state by state, each template setting real election rules
- Reusable themes and custom branding
- Ballot translations in Spanish, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), rendered beside the English ballot of record, never instead of it
Roster and eligibility
- Invite-list elections: only people on the roster can cast a ballot
- CSV import carrying names, emails, phone numbers, units, weights, and mailing addresses
- A roster-request link the list-holder opens to upload the roster, no account needed
- Per-voter ballot delivery: email, text, or paper, set person by person
- Weighted voting by ownership share or any numeric field
- One ballot per unit, with three modes for owners who hold several units
- Directed proxy voting with a per-election cap, revocable until cast
- Duplicate detection for one owner listed under several addresses
- Self-distributed voting codes with PIN and QR entry, opt-in per election
- Printable voting notices, voter-link exports, and voter ID and password sheets
Voter verification
- Email code verification, included in every election
- Text-message code verification, included with every paid election
- Assisted government-ID checks with a liveness step, $3.00 per checked voter
- Administrator-assisted verification, recorded separately from self-verification
- One accepted ballot per credential, enforced and logged
Ballot secrecy
- Anonymous mode: voter identity withheld from organizers, results, and exports
- Sealed ballots: no stored link between voter and ballot at all, the box mixed at close
- Secrecy chosen per election, so a quick poll and a statutory election each get what they need
Voting channels
- A web ballot built for phones, no app and nothing to install
- Email invitations with secure single-use links
- Text-message ballot delivery on paid elections
- Mailed ballot packets with prepaid return envelopes, $6.00 per packet with postage both ways, counted in the same tally as online votes
- Mailed access letters carrying private web-ballot credentials
- An embeddable widget for your own website
Running the election
- Publish with an empty roster and add voters later, free until a paid-size roster exists
- Open on publish or on a schedule, with an optional close date
- Live quorum tracking against a percentage or count threshold, timestamped when reached
- Live results, with visibility you control until close
- Scheduled and one-click reminders that reach only voters who have not voted
- 5 free email test ballots per election, sent down the production path (text tests on paid elections; mailed tests charged like real packets)
- Close early, or close by hand at the meeting
Results and evidence
- A results certificate stating participation, quorum, and the verification level behind each accepted ballot
- A SHA-256 hash-chained audit log, so a record edited later is detectable
- An exportable audit package built for an inspector of elections or a court file
- A confirmation-code receipt for every voter
- CSV and PDF exports rendered from one computation, so they can never disagree
- A public results page you can share with members
- A per-voter ballot report on identified elections
- Election records retained after deletion and restorable on request
Compliance and services
- Notice, quorum, proxy, and ballot-secrecy rules for all 50 states, cited to statute. Research support, not legal advice
- Publish gates where state law requires an inspector of elections
- vote.direct as your independent inspector of elections in Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Texas, Arizona and Maryland, $300 on a managed election. Never in California: Cal. Civ. Code §5110(b) bars a contracted vendor
- Managed elections run end to end from $199, or setup and launch from $99
- Supermajority thresholds tracked separately from quorum
Workspace and platform
- Organization workspaces with shared access for board members
- A people directory, meetings, and documents alongside your elections
- Announcements to residents on annual plans
- Export endpoints, and an MCP server your own AI assistant can use with a key you control
- Your own domain on an election, $50.00 one-time
- Send from your own email domain
- A public status page
- A public MCP server and llms.txt, so AI assistants quote live pricing, state rules, and the verbatim review record instead of guessing, and draft elections for you with your key
- Surveys and link-based polls, free and unlimited
Check everything
This list is checkable, on purpose
Most voting sites describe their product. vote.direct shows it: captioned screenshots of the real interface at https://vote.direct/product, including a live election’s ballot and its results, plus three named places a competitor is easier.
Prices are published to the cent and derived from the same constants the product bills against. Reviews are quoted verbatim and linked to their source, criticism included.
AI assistants can query live pricing, state rules, honest competitor comparisons, and the full review record through the public MCP server at https://vote.direct/api/mcp instead of guessing, and, with a key the organizer controls, set up the election itself.
All of it, from the first election
Free for elections up to 25 voters, from $4.99 above that, and the feature list never changes with the price.