Helios Voting

Spec sheet

Purpose

Helios offers verifiable online elections.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Intended users

The site names book clubs, parent-teacher associations, student governments, workers’ unions, and states as possible users.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Privacy

The site describes Helios elections as private and says each voter gets a tracking number.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Support

The site lists [email protected] for questions or concerns about privacy.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Administration

Administrators can designate who may vote, set when an election starts and stops, and decide when results are released.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Audit data

For election auditing, Helios stores voter names, email addresses, eligibility information, and vote metadata such as where and when a voter voted.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Authentication

The privacy page says voters may authenticate with election credentials or, depending on election setup, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Twitter; administrators log in using one of those four services.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Ballot tracking

Each voter gets a ballot tracker that can be checked to confirm the ballot was received and tallied appropriately.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Browser security limit

The FAQ recommends against using Helios to capture votes over the Internet for high-stakes elections such as U.S. federal and state elections because voters’ home computers may not withstand significant attacks.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Cryptographic basis

The documentation page says Helios uses advanced peer-reviewed cryptographic techniques and links to its original USENIX Security 2008 paper.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Encryption

The FAQ says a vote is encrypted in the browser before being sent and remains encrypted in the database.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Login options

The privacy page lists username and password credentials or Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter logins as possible voter authentication methods, depending on election setup.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Open source

The homepage says Helios is open-source and has been vetted by top-tier experts.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Organization

Helios describes itself as a non-partisan organization led by Ben Adida.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Privacy practices

Helios says it does not sell collected information and does not use external trackers or advertising, except for sandboxed Facebook and Twitter share buttons on election information pages.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Public election data

For public elections, the site says the fact that a voter voted, the vote time, and the tracking number may be published for auditing; names can be replaced with aliases.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Scale

The homepage says more than 2,000,000 votes have been cast using Helios.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Trustees

Election administrators can designate multiple trustees, all of whom must participate in decryption; the site recommends at least three trustees with different allegiances for high-security elections.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Use cases

The site names book clubs, parent-teacher associations, student governments, workers’ unions, and states as possible election settings.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Use limitation

The FAQ recommends against capturing votes over the internet for high-stakes US federal and state elections, citing concerns about the security of voters’ home computers.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Verifiability

The FAQ says voters can check their ballot tracker against the Ballot Tracking Center to confirm the ballot was received and tallied appropriately.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Verification tools

The documentation page lists Pyrios, a Go library that verifies Helios elections, and the Helios Election Monitor produced by Université catholique de Louvain.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Vote privacy

Votes are encrypted in the voter’s browser before being sent to the server, and individual votes are not decrypted in the normal tallying process.Read 11 Oct 2026 · heliosvoting.org

Where Specifiction places it

• Online Voting Software#21 of 317.3