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Run a voting contest for awards

Set up an award or an audience poll: categories and nominees, paid or free votes, and a count people can check.

Checked against Durbar on

Voting is for awards, pageants and audience polls. Never use it for an SRC, an AGM or any other binding election: there's no voter roll and no secret ballot, and one phone isn't one person.

Create the contest

  1. In the console, open Voting and choose New contest. Give it a Name, say what it's About the contest, set when it Opens and Closes, and the event it's Part of an event, if any.
  2. Under Votes are, choose Paid or Free.
  3. Choose Who sees the count: Live results, When voting closes, or Keep the count private.
  4. Choose Create draft.
  5. Add categories and nominees, up to 100 categories and 2,000 nominees. Each nominee has a photo, a few words about them and a short code to say on radio, such as KO1. Or use Import nominees to paste them from a spreadsheet.
  6. Choose Publish contest.

Paid votes

  • Set the Price of one vote, from GH₵0.10, and the vote packs voters choose from. One payment is at least GH₵1.00.
  • Voters pay on the nominee's page by MoMo or card, and get an SMS receipt. Votes count once the payment is confirmed.
  • You can set Most votes per voter across the contest. Treat it as a guide: phone numbers aren't checked, so one buyer can type several. Votes over the limit are refunded.
  • Payments confirmed up to 30 minutes after voting closes count. After that they don't: the voter gets their money back automatically.
  • Paid votes measure money raised, not how many people voted, and the money comes to you, so an organizer could buy a winner. Public results show paid and free totals apart.
  • You need payouts set up first. Durbar's 3% and Paystack's fee, about 1.95%, come from your share. Voters pay the price shown, with nothing added.

Free votes

Free voting sends a 6-digit code by SMS to the voter's phone, so each phone votes only as often as you allow in each category, with Votes per phone in each category. The phone number isn't shown to anyone.

Once voting opens

The price, packs and limits are fixed so every voter gets the same deal, and nominee codes stay the same. Voting can be extended but not ended early, except with Close voting, which can't be undone. You can make results more public, never less.

The live view refreshes every 10 seconds. Worth a look points out votes you may want to check, and nothing is removed for you. To remove votes, void them, with a reason everyone can read. If a bank or wallet provider reverses a payment, its votes come off by themselves, in public.

Once voting opens, correcting a nominee's name or photo, or letting voting run longer, needs a passkey. A correction needs a reason too. These changes, withdrawals and closing early are all listed on the contest's verify page and sealed into its chain. Once voting closes, nominees can't change at all.

For an awards night where an academy or a board also has a say, see Add judges' scores to public votes.

Voting is on the web, on any phone. Voting by USSD or WhatsApp isn't available.

Ready to try it?

Sign in to the console with a code sent to your phone or email. The first code creates your account.

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