Eligibility
Who is a member in good standing on the record date? Who is qualified to hold this particular seat? The rule exists in the bylaws and is enforced by whoever remembers it.
Governance of record for membership associations
Elections your members cannot argue with.
Ballot encodes your bylaws once, runs nominations with recorded consent, collects confidential ballots from any device, and closes with an audit file that holds up when a result is contested.
No card required. Full features during the trial. Built for veteran service organizations, professional societies, chapters, and small HOAs.
Veteran built. Yost Group LLC is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Business (SDVOB).
- Eligibility
- 1,240 members frozen at scheduling, config hash 9f3a...c1
- Nominations
- 5 received, 4 eligible, 1 ineligible: does not hold a Regional Commander office
- Consent
- 4 of 4 candidates consented, 4 of 4 seconded
- Notices
- 1,240 invited, 2 reminders, 11 bounces flagged for correction
- Turnout
- 612 accepted ballots, 49.4%. Quorum of 25% met
- Approvals
- Scheduled, closed, and certified by two officers each
Illustrative. Figures are not from a real election.
The problem
The ballot was never the hard part.
In August 2026 a national veterans association opened its board election by email. Within two days a regional officer had nominated two members, and the person running the election had to write back and explain that this seat may only be held by a sitting regional commander. The nominations were withdrawn. Nobody did anything wrong. The rule lived in the bylaws and in one person's head, not in the process.
Small associations run elections on email threads, a member spreadsheet, and the memory of whoever has the job this year. Four failures repeat.
Nomination
Nominations arrive by email. Seconds get lost, consent is assumed, and candidates find out they were nominated after the fact.
Continuity
Who was eligible last year, how notice was given, what the quorum was. When the coordinator changes, the record leaves with them.
Defensibility
A contested result needs a record: who was eligible, who was notified, what the quorum was, when the ballot closed. Most small organizations cannot produce one.
What Ballot does
Knowing who may stand, who may vote, and what happened is the product.
Every rule you would otherwise carry in your head is written down once, enforced by the system, and recorded for the next coordinator.
Candidacy rules, encoded once
Per-seat conditions checked against roster fields: membership category, status, current office, group, good standing. Every nomination gets an immediate determination with the rule and the reason in plain language. An ineligible name never reaches a ballot.
Nominations with consent and seconds
Members nominate during a defined window. The seconder and the candidate each confirm by email link, and the timestamps are kept. No consent, no ballot line. Withdrawals are recorded, not erased.
Two-person approvals
Scheduling, slate close, roster exceptions, deadline changes, certification, publication, and cancellation each require a stated reason and a second authorized person. One account cannot fill both roles.
Eligibility frozen at scheduling
Voter eligibility is derived from the approved roster and the cutoff date, then frozen with a hash of the election configuration. The full eligible roster is the turnout denominator. Nobody silently disappears from it.
Confidential ballots with receipts
Ballot rows carry no member id, email, IP address, or access token. Each voter gets a random receipt code that proves acceptance without revealing choices. Exactly one accepted ballot per member, even under concurrent submissions.
Counting rules made explicit
Single-seat and multi-seat plurality, instant runoff for single-seat ranked contests, Yes/No/Abstain questions with a stated threshold and denominator, optional quorum, and write-ins with approval. Ties are never resolved automatically.
Branded notices, no double sends
Invitations and reminders go out under your name and sender address, previewed and test-sent before the first campaign. Reminders reach only members without an accepted ballot and honor suppression lists.
Certification and the audit file
After close, participation and ballot counts are reconciled and totals recomputed. Certification is blocked on any mismatch or unresolved tie. The report carries rules, denominators, quorum, the nomination record, exceptions, configuration hash, and approvals.
Your brand, your data
Logo, colors, and sender identity on every voter page and email, with each palette checked against WCAG 2.2 AA before it can be saved. Full export of everything your association owns, whenever you want it.
How it works
Four steps, one record.
Load rules and roster
Import your member CSV, set the eligibility cutoff, and encode the candidacy conditions for each seat. The system tells you what it will enforce before anyone is nominated.
Run nominations with consent
Open a nomination window. Members nominate, seconders confirm, candidates consent, and every determination is recorded. Close the slate with a two-person approval.
Vote from any device
Each eligible member gets a one-time access code or link at the roster email. The ballot works on a phone in one tap. Reminders go only to those who have not voted.
Certify and publish
Reconcile, recompute, and certify with a second officer. Publish results to the audience you choose and attach the audit file to the minutes.
Positioning
What it is, and what it is not.
Ballot is
- A governance rulebook encoded once and applied every cycle
- A nomination and consent record with automatic eligibility checks
- A confidential ballot with receipts and explicit counting rules
- An audit file a contested member cannot argue with
Ballot is not
- A cheaper ballot-casting tool. Casting ballots is the easy part.
- A board portal with document libraries and meeting minutes
- A government or public-election system
- An anonymity protocol against the people who run the servers
Security
Built so the result can be questioned and still stand.
One-time voter access
Hashed codes and links that expire in minutes, with attempt limits and throttling. No voter passwords.
Ballots without identity
Ballot rows store selections and a date, nothing that links back to a member.
Append-only audit trail
Every administrative change and approval, with actor, approver, time, and configuration version. Managers cannot edit it.
Admin MFA and roles
Authenticator-app MFA for administrators, distinct roles for manager, certifier, and auditor, time-limited sessions.
Pricing
Published prices. Buy what you will use.
Annual plan
From $230 a year for up to 250 members. Unlimited elections.
Single election
Or $122 for one election with 250 eligible voters.
Questions
Frequently asked.
How does the 7-day trial work?
Every feature is on from the first minute, with no card required. Elections scheduled during the trial are capped at 50 eligible voters, which covers a real board or committee vote.
When the trial ends, choose an annual plan, a monthly plan, or a single election. Nothing you configured is lost.
Is pricing per member or per election?
Both are offered. Annual plans are priced by roster size, with unlimited elections, from $230 a year. A single election is a base charge plus a per-voter rate on the eligible voters frozen at scheduling: $122 with 250 eligible voters.
See pricing for the bands and worked examples.
Can voters see our name and domain, not yours?
Yes. Your logo, colors, and sender name appear on every voter page and email. Mail is sent from a platform domain with SPF and DKIM aligned by default, or from your own sending domain once its DNS records are verified.
Serving election pages from a domain you own is available on request during setup.
Do you support ranked choice?
Yes, as an optional per-contest method. Single-seat ranked contests are counted by instant runoff with round-by-round tallies in the certification report. Rankings are validated for gaps and duplicates before review and again on the server.
Can we get our data out?
At any time. Roster, audit trail, and results export as CSV, and a full offboarding export contains everything your association owns. Ballots are exported as they are stored: selections with no link to a member.
Do our members need accounts?
No. A member opens the election link, requests a code sent to the email on your approved roster, and votes. Codes expire in minutes and are hashed at rest. No passwords, no profiles.
What happens on a tie?
The result is marked unresolved. Ballot never picks a winner by coin flip or by ordering. You apply your bylaws' tie-break by an approved adjudication, or run a separate runoff election, and the audit file records which.
Who is this for?
Veteran service organizations, professional societies, chapters and posts under a national body, and small HOAs. Anyone with bylaws, a roster, and an annual vote that has to hold up. Public and governmental elections are out of scope.
Run the next election on the record.
Set up your association in an afternoon. 7 days free, no card required, every feature on.