General Information
Kiosk voting is a tool that lets you run in-person voting on shared devices optimized for high turnover. Instead of each elector voting from their own device, voters take turns at one or more communal devices that you set up and manage. Kiosk voting can be used on its own or alongside remote (online) voting in the same election.
In the Election Manager, each kiosk is a named record that you create and control. You give it a name, activate it on the device it will run on, and deactivate it when you are done. Activity from each kiosk feeds into the Reports, Election Log, and Account Log pages, so you can review turnout by kiosk, trace each in-person vote back to the device it was cast on, and see who managed each kiosk.
Planning Your Kiosk Voting Event
Before running a voting event with kiosks, it is worth thinking through a few practical questions:
How in-person voting will interact with remote voting, if you are running both.
What credentials electors will use to log in, and whether those credentials are already known to each elector or need to be provided ahead of time or on site (for example, through a staffed help desk for electors who do not have or have forgotten their credentials).
What devices your organization will provide, and how those devices will be secured.
How many devices to make available, and how much time to allot for voting.
Whether internet access will be wired, or wireless through a standard router or a secondary cellular data router.
Which users in the Election Manager should be allowed to create, activate, and manage kiosks.
Any other considerations specific to your organization, your venue, or your election event.
Any device with an active internet connection and a web browser can serve as a kiosk. The most common choices are tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.
The Elector Experience
For an elector, voting at a kiosk is largely the same as voting remotely. There are a few deliberate differences:
Any external links included in the ballot are disabled while an elector is voting at a kiosk, to prevent accidental or unwanted navigation away from the ballot.
After an elector submits their ballot, they are automatically logged out so the device is ready for the next person in line.
Idle sessions are terminated sooner than in normal voting. In kiosk mode, an inactivity warning appears after 5 minutes and logout follows 2 minutes later if no action is taken (compared to 30 and 10 minutes respectively in normal voting), so the device does not sit on an abandoned session.
Votes cast at an activated kiosk are recorded as kiosk votes in the Election Log.
Voting receipts are still issued by default and remain accessible to electors if they log in later from another device.
Kiosk Management Permission
The ability to create, activate, deactivate, and delete kiosks is controlled by the Kiosk Management permission.
By default, all Super Users can manage kiosks. Super Users can also configure other users with more limited permissions.
For a non-Super User to manage kiosks, they must be granted Full Access to the Kiosk Management permission. Without it, they will not be able to create or activate a kiosk.
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Users with Read Only Access to Kiosk Management can see the list of Kiosks and the “Last Seen” state for each, but cannot create, delete, activate, or deactivate a kiosk.
For more information about creating and configuring users, see Managing Users.
Note: The previous Kiosk Activation permission has been replaced by Kiosk Management. Any user who had permission to activate kiosks before the change has automatically been granted Full Access to Kiosk Management, so existing users keep the same level of access without any action needed.