RCV123 - New features and updates

New features and updates

We are constantly updating RCV123! Watch this page to learn about new features and significant app updates.

The ballot design has been updated to be more compact and modern to ensure a better mobile voting experience. The candidate ranking list has been moved below the ballot to allow more space for candidate names. Long candidate names will wrap and will never be truncated.

The new ballot design is more compact and mobile-friendly while preventing candidate name clipping.

A ballot may now be previewed at any time, even if voting hasn't opened or if it has closed.
- Ballot previews can be reached from the Links page or from the Dashboard.
- If the ballot has multiple contests, they will all show up together.

New ballot previews let you see a ballot and its settings, or just the ballot for printing purposes.

You can now print paper ballots for any election. From the Ballot preview page, press the Print ballot button to open your browser's print dialog.
- If the ballot has multiple contests, they will all be included in the printout. Contests will not be split across page breaks.
- If your ballot uses randomized candidate order, the candidates will be in a different order each time the ballot is printed.
- Each printed ballot will contain voting instructions appropriate for paper ballots.

When configuring your ballot, you will see a new advanced option: Require voters to use all ranking columns. This option lets you require voters to use all ranking columns. Complete rankings are required in some public elections, such as Australian federal elections.

Google Sheets links can now be used directly for spreadsheet uploads.

New icons and text illustrate what happened in each round of voting. Winners are marked with in the round they are elected. Eliminated candidates are marked "eliminated" and "lost tie-breaker" indicates which candidate lost a tie-breaker round.
In multi-winner elections, the winning candidates are now sorted in the order in which they were elected. In the round after a candidate is elected, their surplus votes are transferred and displayed as hashed in the subsequent round. The surplus votes of last candidate elected are not transferred because the election has ended. For display fairness, the surplus votes of this candidate will be reverse-hashed so the candidate does not appear to have received more votes than winners who were elected in earlier rounds.
If voting is not closed, results are clearly marked as "Preliminary"
New tooltips on the color bars help you understand exactly what happened in each round, with precise vote counts.
Information about the election close date (when it closed or when it is scheduled to close) is now displayed.
If the election has no scheduled close date, a Close voting button on the results page allows the administrator to close voting without visiting the Dashboard

Multi-winner election results now show the order candidates were elected.

Contest description: You may optionally enter text which will appear on the ballot page for each specific ballot contest.
- You may use this text to clarify the purpose of the contest or to provide information voters may consider while voting.
Ballot description: Ballots with more than one contest may have an overall ballot description to be displayed on every page of the ballot.

Contest descriptions can now be added to provide voters with additional context.

New Sample ballots were added for RCV elections outside of the United States, such as Australia, Ireland, and Malta.

Certain pages were optimized for better display on mobile devices. This is an ongoing process.