CIVS is a free Internet voting service that makes it easy to conduct polls on the Web. Each voter ranks a set of possible choices. Combined, these rankings are used to construct an overall ranking that anonymously summarizes the opinions of all voters. CIVS has been used for many polls and elections. Things that CIVS has been used to select include:

  • Officers of organizations
  • Meeting times
  • Members of committees
  • Project names, logos, domain names
  • Recipients of awards
  • Restaurants to eat at
  • Movies to watch
  • Party menus
  • Book club selections
  • Favorite music

How it works: Anyone is allowed to create a new CIVS poll, and only authorized voters will know about it. Voters and the poll supervisor must have e-mail and web access. When an poll is created, voters are sent e-mail informing them that the poll is open and giving them a URL where they can rank their choices. You may create a poll for which voters do not need e-mail access. Then one vote is allowed per IP address.

Ranking: This voting system allows voters to rank their choices, rather than just picking their most preferred choice. Compared to other polling methods, it collects and uses more information from voters. Ranking choices also avoids problems with vote splitting and spoilers. Australia is an example of a country with a voting system based on ranking, Instant Runoff Voting. However, the Condorcet method used by this service is better at identifying consensus candidates. Unlike most other Condorcet-based voting systems, CIVS also supports proportional representation.

A new, highly secure version of CIVS called Civitas is under development, and is the subject of a research paper. Civitas uses much more sophisticated cryptographic protocols to provide strong anonymity, universal verifiability, and coercion resistance.



Try some public polls!

The Condorcet Internet Voting Service is run by Andrew Myers at the Cornell Computer Science Department. Feedback is welcome.

Fine print: This voting service is available for free, public use. No guarantees can be made that this service will be correct or available and under no conditions will the authors or service providers, including Cornell University, be liable for any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use of this service.