Belenios vs SnapBallot

Belenios is a free, verifiable online voting system for elections and referendums, including scientific councils and sports associations. Its hosted web platform supports standard candidate selection and preferential elections using Condorcet, Single Transferable Vote, and Majority Judgment. Weighted votes are available for standard elections. Votes are encrypted to protect individual choices, subject to the election’s decryption-key setup. Voters can check that ballots appear in a public ballot box, and anyone can verify that the result matches those ballots. Authentication options include public accounts, Google login, and CAS. The hosted service supports up to 2,500 voters per election; larger elections are directed toward institutional hosting. Belenios is also self-hostable free software under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. Voters and email addresses cannot be changed after an election starts, and trustee key loss prevents tallying. The hosted plan is free.

SnapBallot is a self-service online voting platform for member organizations. Administrators can create ballots, invite voters, track participation, and view results for board elections, bylaw amendments, contract ratifications, special votes, referendums, and run-offs. Vote weighting can reflect ownership, membership class, proxy assignments, or other organizational rules. Administrators can set minimum and maximum voting requirements for ballot items. Ballots are anonymous in a specific sense: administrators can see who voted, but not individual selections. Reports include daily participation, voter logs, and email recaps. Each election includes one invitation email and two reminders; more reminders cost extra. The maker describes end-to-end encryption, single-use magic-link authentication, and audit trails, and says the platform runs on Microsoft Azure. It works on Android, iOS, and the web. The free election plan covers up to 15 voters; paid elections start at $49 for 16–250 voters. Voters who need paper ballots or lack email must be handled separately, with their results combined afterward.