Important Update
Starting January 12, 2026, Simply Voting will begin automatically archiving elections that are older than five years. Archiving helps reduce the amount of personally identifiable information (PII) we retain unnecessarily, while still letting you access key information.
Finished elections with recorded votes will be automatically archived once they are five years old. Finished elections with zero recorded votes will be permanently deleted once they are five years old.
If your organization needs to retain data for longer than five years, please reach out to Support—we’re happy to discuss options.
What’s the Difference Between Archiving and Deleting?
Archiving an Election… | Deleting an election… | |
|---|---|---|
Election Details | Saves | Deletes |
Results Summary (CSV) | Saves | Deletes |
Questions | Saves | Deletes |
Options | Saves | Deletes |
Descriptions | Saves | Deletes |
Votes | Deletes | Deletes |
Electors | Deletes | Deletes |
Certified Results (PDF) | Deletes | Deletes |
Reports | Deletes | Deletes |
Election Log | Deletes | Deletes |
Archiving an Election
Finished elections with at least 1 vote cast can be archived. Archiving an election:
Saves the election’s name, start & end dates, number of votes, number of electors, and ballot content (questions, options, and descriptions) under Archived Elections.
Saves a summary of the results as a downloadable CSV file under Archived Elections.
Permanently erases the Certified Results PDF from your account.
Permanently erases all associated elector data, logs, and individual votes from Simply Voting’s servers.
Important: Archived elections cannot be restored. However, you can clone an archived election into a new Draft to recover its contents (questions, options, and descriptions).
To archive an election, navigate to the Elections page and click on the Archive button in the Action column next to the desired election, then confirm.
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To review your archived elections, navigate to the Elections page and click on the Archived Elections button.
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On the Archived Elections page, you may search for a specific election using the Find An Election search bar.
You may also download summary results in CSV format by clicking on the Download Results button in the Action column.
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Cloning an Archived Election
Cloning an archived election allows you to create a new Draft using the original election’s contents, including question titles, question details, option names, and option descriptions. The original list of electors, however, cannot be recovered.
To clone an archived election, navigate to the Archived Elections page, click on the Clone button in the Action column next to the desired election, define a new Election Name for your draft, then click Create.
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Deleting an Election
From the Elections page
Draft and Finished elections can be deleted from the Elections page. Deleting an election:
Permanently erases the election’s name, start & end dates, number of votes, number of electors, and ballot content (questions, options, and descriptions) from your account.
Permanently erases the Certified Results PDF from your account.
Permanently erases all associated elector data, logs, and individual votes from Simply Voting’s servers.
Important: Deleted elections cannot be restored.
To delete an election, navigate to the Elections page and click on the Delete button in the Action column next to the desired election, then confirm.
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From the Archived Elections page
Deleting an archived election permanently erases all remaining election data, including the election’s name, start & end dates, number of votes, number of electors, ballot content, and summary results CSV from Simply Voting’s servers.
Important: Elections deleted from the Archive cannot be reinstated.
To delete an archived election, navigate to the Archived Elections page and click on the Delete button in the Action column next to the desired election, then confirm.
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