This post lists some best free open source voting system to conduct polls online. Here these services let you create an online poll and then you can let other users specify their choices. You just have to install these services on your server and then you use them in the way you want. These voting systems let you create different type of votes and then allow people to input various options. And in the end, you can analyze the result of the voting and declare it. There is an online demo for these services is available and you can test them out before actually using them.
For creating votes and polls, there are many websites out there to create text-based, image based, and video based polls but if you want some polling systems that you can run on your servers then this post will show you some. The open source voting systems that I have added in the list can be used on a VPS or other dedicated servers. You can use these voting systems for school, college elections, and for anything that you want. I am not sure about using them on a very large audience but they should work fine if you supply enough memory for storing the database.
4 Free Open Source Voting System to Conduct Polls Online:
Helois Voting
Helois Voting is one of the best free open source voting system that you can try. Here in this voting system, you can specify a poll and opt for automatically open the election specified time. Here it lets you specify some registered voters and you can create a public poll as well. There is an online version for this system is available and you can also use its source code to install and run it.
You create an account there and then simply start adding the questions. Also, specify the a time at which voting will open and it will start recording the responses. Additionally, if you want to make further changes in the currently running poll then you can do that
Simple log in to your account and then create a poll. After that, create questions, add relevant options, and then you can save the poll. Specify the time at which the poll will open and then you can specify the expiration date. You can install it by using a few command and then do whatever you want. The more options can be found on its GitHub page.
Votr
Votr is an interesting voting application which is clean, simple, and intuitive. There is an online version of this application is hosted on Heroku that you can access to test out its functionality. However, to run it on your own server, you will have to make certain adjustments in the code to make it work. But it won’t take so much time. On this, you simply create an admin account, create polls, and simply publish them. It lets you specify expiry to the votes by specifying a date and time. On that time, it will automatically disable new votes and you can analyze the results.
This voting system is written in Python so you will need to have some knowledge of Python in order to get started with it. If you want then you can deploy your own version of this voting system on Heroku but in my opinion, use a VPS like DigitalOcean for best performance. The installation process is very simple as it is a Flask application. And all the instructions are given on ins GitHub page. The main interface of this voting system looks like that screenshot I have added above.
This voting system lacks video and image votes. You just add a question and add relevant options there. While you are creating poll using this service, you can see the final preview as well. Finally, save it and get URL and share that. From the main dashboard, you can see the stats of the polls and then declare the result in the way you want.
SimpleVote
SimpleVote is a very nice simple and live voting system which is open source that you can use. It come with a simple interface where you can create polls and then publish them. There is a demo version of this voting service is hosted which is fully functional using a test account. It not only lets you create polls but there is a simple chatting option as well in the sidebar. The voting is real-time and you can always see the stats of the polls which you have created. It allows you to set an expiration time and the votes can be anonymous.
You can simply get the code of this service from GitHub and follow the corresponding instructions to set up this on your own server. After that, create an admin account and then start creating polls. Add subject for the poll and define the corresponding option that you want to show. If you want to add multiple questions in the poll then you can do that. You can see the final preview of the poll and see the stats for them.
This voting system is written in Node.js and if you have set up Node on your server then you will only have to run a few commands to set it up. And the best part of running this voting system on your server or VPS is though docker. You just clone the repository from GitHub and then docker compose the content and that will take care of rest of the process. You can access the app at “http://localhost:4567“. Or, if you have a domain then you can configure that there as well.
Poll
Poll is another free open source voting system that you can consider. This application is written using Ruby on Rails and pretty simple one. On the simple interface, you create a poll and it will give you a URL for that. You can share that with anyone you want and then it shows a link to results as well.
This is a real-time voting application that you can install and use on almost any server on which you can install Rails. The design of the polls that it uses is very nice and you can opt show the result of the polls as well. Just like other voting system I have mentioned in this list, you can access its hosted version and test it out.
There is no need to create an account. You just create a poll, add subject and specify the corresponding options. Save the poll and it will give its URL. You can share that with the public to start receiving the responses. You can go to the results section and analyze it. It automatically creates a pie chart for the votes for you to make it easy to analyze the results.
Also see: 4 Free Survey Creators Open Source
Final thoughts
If you want to set up your own polling system on your server then you can use any of the above open source voting systems I have mentioned. You just need some technical knowledge to install and deploy them. All the voting system that I have mentioned above can be used for any kind of voting you want to conduct. You can set expiration time to automatically close new votes and analyze the results. And there are some other features in these voting systems that you will like. If you’re looking for free online voting systems then this post will be very helpful.
