Fast Elections VS ForwardMsg

Fast Elections's answer

Fast Elections is real election software built for the volunteer who runs one vote a year.

The secret ballot is architectural, not a promise. A cast ballot is stored as a standalone record with no reference back to the voter and only an hour-rounded timestamp, so it can't be tied to a person or narrowed down by when it arrived. Voting links are single-use and only their hash is ever stored, so even a read of the database can't reconstruct a working link. We can't connect a ballot to a voter either — and we publish how it works instead of just asserting it.

Voters can check the count themselves. Every voter gets a receipt code and can find that code in the published results.

Pricing is one flat charge per election, sized to the roster, with every feature included at every tier — free up to 25 voters, then $19, $49, or $99. No per-member seats, no annual contract, nothing to cancel.

Voters never create an account. They get a one-time link by email, vote, and get a receipt. Organizers can also share a link or a printable QR poster and let voters register themselves.

The ballot methods are the serious ones: plurality and pick-N, ranked choice (instant-runoff, with every elimination round shown), approval voting, and yes/no/abstain motions — plus write-ins, weighted votes for share- or unit-based memberships, and per-question eligibility for segmented ballots. Ballots and voter emails run in 10 languages.

And it's one founder, not a call center. The person who wrote the counting code answers the support mail, within one business day.

Fast Elections's answer

Price and scope. Most election platforms are built for governments or large enterprises and priced accordingly — per-member seats, annual contracts, quotes, or a sales call. Fast Elections charges once per election based on roster size: free up to 25 voters, $19 up to 300, $49 up to 1,000, $99 up to 5,000. That's a number a volunteer treasurer can approve without a board vote, and it doesn't recur when your club isn't voting.

No feature gating. Ranked choice, approval voting, weighted votes, write-ins, custom branding, multi-language ballots, self-serve voter registration, up to 10 administrators — all included at every tier, including the free one. Competitors routinely put ranked choice or branding behind a higher plan.

Setup in minutes, not a project. Paste or import your roster from CSV or Excel, write your questions, and launch. Voters need no account and nothing to install.

Trust you can show your members. Receipt codes let each voter verify their own ballot is in the published count, and instant-runoff results display every elimination round rather than just a winner — so you can answer "how did that come out?" at the meeting.

Support from the builder. Not a ticket queue: the founder who designed and wrote the software reads the mail and answers within one business day.

Worth saying plainly: this is not built for government or enterprise-scale elections. If you need a certified public-sector election system, buy one. If you're a club, PTA, HOA, union local, or small nonprofit running an honest internal vote, this is built for exactly you.

Fast Elections's answer

Small, volunteer-run organizations that hold one to a few elections a year and have no IT department: garden and social clubs, PTAs, student governments and school clubs, homeowners' and condo associations, union locals, professional associations, churches, and small nonprofits.

The person who signs up is usually a secretary, treasurer, board chair, or election committee volunteer — someone who has been running the vote on paper or in a survey tool, is losing an evening to counting, and needs a secret ballot the membership will actually trust. Typical rosters run from a couple dozen to a few thousand voters; the platform tops out at 5,000 per election.

Fast Elections is deliberately not built for government or enterprise-scale elections.

Fast Elections's answer

Serious election software is usually built for governments — and priced for them. But the groups that actually run the most elections are garden clubs, PTAs, student governments, HOAs, union locals, and small nonprofits. They end up choosing between a survey tool that can't keep a ballot secret and a paper count that eats an evening. Either way, somebody at the meeting eventually asks whether the result can be trusted.

Fast Elections was built by Votivigy LLC to be the honest middle: a real secret ballot, a receipt each voter can verify for themselves, ranked choice that shows its rounds, and a price a volunteer treasurer can approve without a procurement process. Charging once per election, sized to the roster, follows from the same idea — that's when the work happens, so that's when you pay. No seats, no annual contract, no renewal you forget to cancel.

Votivigy LLC is Jason Cline. He designed Fast Elections, wrote the software that runs it, and reads the mail that comes to jason@fastelections.com. When you ask why a tally came out the way it did, the answer comes from the person who built the counting.

Fast Elections's answer

Frontend: TypeScript, Vue 3, Vuetify 4, Vite, Vue Router, and vue-i18n, with marketing pages prerendered via vite-ssg.

Backend: fully serverless on AWS.

Payments: Stripe Checkout with signature-verified webhooks.

The serverless choice is deliberate — it costs almost nothing while idle, which is what makes a $19 election economically possible.

Fast Elections's answer

Fast Elections serves small, volunteer-run member organizations — clubs, PTAs, HOAs, student governments, union locals, and small nonprofits — running internal votes. We don't publish customer names without permission, and as a young product we don't yet have public reference customers to list.