Voting is anonymous A1

"A1" means a secret vote. "A1" means a secret vote. In summary, our database retains a record of how you voted, but that information is never made available to the Client. Unlike A0 type polls, A1 polls retain a link in the database between your voting account and your votes. A common reason for choosing an A1, rather than A0 poll type, is to retain the option of issuing re-vote rights that allow End Users to override any unauthorized or unintended votes. A1 polls also enable unauthorized votes to be suppressed however vote suppression cannot be used without approval from BigPulse. BigPulse may accept vote suppression requests if its designated account managers are satisfied, at their own discretion, that the request is genuine.

More on A1 vote secrecy and protecting secrecy
To protect vote secrecy you need to keep your vote receipt a secret – see note 1. To protect vote secrecy it is also important to keep your sign-in credentials private and secure. Changing your BigPulse password immediately before or after voting will enhance security of vote secrecy and break any email auto sign-in links that may have been sent to you. To change your password click the My Details link in the poll. Your computer needs to be free of any malware that could compromise vote secrecy. Poll administrators may be able to view the vote counts or who voted before the poll closes, but not both at the same time – see note 2. At times vote filtering can compromise secrecy protection – see note 3. See note 4 for exceptions. See note 5 for polls where voters are assigned personal vote weights.

Note 1.
To protect the secrecy of your anonymous votes it is important not to disclose your vote receipt to anyone because sometimes vote receipts codes with attached vote selections are disclosed to poll administrators, auditors or even published as part of the vote verification process.

Note 2.
Note 2. For anonymous polls (type A0 and type A1), prior to vote close and before the data is released for viewing the poll administrator may be able to view the vote counts or who has voted but not both together – depending on how the poll was configured before poll open time. Polls can also be configured to never show who voted. With A1 type polls this setting determines if poll administrators can view time stamps attached to votes. However vote recorded from A0 type polls have no time stamps attached to enhance vote secrecy protection.

Note 3.
If you vote in a poll that places people into known groupings or categories (a "Voter Category Poll") then the poll administrators can use filtering to view the vote counts from a selected category in all the linked poll. Normally this filtering does not compromise anonymity. However in the case that everyone in your category votes the same way, or it's known that you are the only person within a particular category, then your voting record in polls, questions or ballots linked to the Voter Category Poll can be determined by the poll administrators. However, in this case the filtered vote counts are suppressed from view if a category has only one voter in it or all voters in the category vote the same way – except this protection by suppression is overridden if you see A0f or A1f in the lower panel in the poll. Also, the vote counts can be filtered by the poll administrators using the categories in any popdown selectors seen in your "My Details" page.

Note 4.
You should never assume your vote is protected by anonymity if you vote using someone else's voting account, whether authorized by the true account owner or not.

Note 5.
If you vote in a poll where each voter is assigned a personal vote weight and this weight is likely to be unique for some voters then you should assume that the poll administrators have the ability to determine how you voted. This is because the poll administrators will often have access to the raw vote file showing the weight attached to each vote.

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