City University of Hong Kong

Introducing Simply Voting

This is the IT service used by City University of Hong Kong to conduct online elections. It makes elections more convenient, less costly and friendlier on the environment.

How Simply Voting Works

1. If authentication is successful, the voter will be presented with a list of any ongoing elections.
2. If the voter has not voted, the voter may click on the election and a tamper-proof electronic ballot will appear.
3. When the voter submits a ballot, the results are encrypted and kept anonymous. The voter is issued a receipt and is now blocked from voting for this election again.

Privacy and Security

Simply Voting was designed from the ground-up to minimize the risk of electoral fraud. Voters who bypass authentication or have already voted are denied access to the ballot, and ballots are checked for validity before being accepted. Nobody can find out what a particular voter has voted as the results are stored anonymously.

Communication between the voter's device and the Simply Voting website is encrypted with TLS 1.3. The servers are "hardened" and are routinely subjected to PCI Compliance security scans. The application code adheres to guidelines set out by the Open Web Application Security Project.