Terms of use

Purpose

These terms govern the use of Condorcet.Vote, an online voting service published by Condorcet.Vote. They apply both to anyone running an election on the platform and to anyone called to vote in one. The terms of sale for the paid offers and the processing agreement for organizers are separate documents.

Definitions

In this document, the following terms have the meaning set out below.

Organizer

The person who creates an election and administers it, either with an account or with an admin secret.

Voter

A person on an election’s electoral roll, called to vote. Voting requires no account.

Election

A vote run on the platform, from its creation to the publication of its result.

Electoral roll

The set of voters registered for an election, assembled by the organizer.

Vote link

The personal, secret link through which a voter reaches their ballot.

Admin secret

The secret that administers an election created without an account. It is a bearer credential: holding it grants access, with no further identity check.

Public register

The hash-chained, signed blocks published for an election, which let anyone recount its result.

Credits

The prepaid unit that marks an election as Official, at one credit per voter on the roll.

Acceptance and changes

Using the service constitutes acceptance of these terms. We may amend them: the version in force is the one published on this page, with its update date. An amendment has no effect on an election already open for voting.

Account and access

An election can be created with an account, or without one using an admin secret. You are responsible for keeping your credentials, that secret and the vote links you distribute confidential. The admin secret stays visible in your organizer space for as long as you can reach it, but there is no e-mail recovery: if you lose both the secret and your access, regenerating it requires our intervention and proof of ownership established by other means. Voters have no account: they reach their ballot through their personal link.

Organizer obligations

You run your election; we provide the tool that holds it. That split implies the following commitments.

Lawfulness of the vote

You warrant that the election is lawful and complies with the rules binding you: bylaws, internal regulations, collective agreements, applicable legal provisions.

Electoral roll

You assemble the roll and warrant that you are entitled to process the contact details you enter in it. You are its data controller; we act as processor.

Informing voters

You inform voters of the rules of the election and, if you enable non-anonymous voting, that their identity will be published together with their ballot.

Content

You are answerable for the content you enter (title, description, candidate names and photos, messages) and hold the rights needed to publish it.

Good faith

You undertake not to register fictitious voters and not to assign several vote links to the same person.

The voter

Voting requires neither an account nor an installation. The ballot is signed in your browser: its content is not tied to your identity, unless the organizer enabled non-anonymous voting. The vote link and the key that comes with it are personal: passing them on amounts to giving your vote away. Disputes about the composition of the roll or the rules of the election are the organizer’s: the platform does not arbitrate them.

Prohibited uses

The service is provided to run votes. The following are excluded in particular:

Unlawful content

Any content that is unlawful, defamatory, hateful, or infringes a third party’s rights.

Interference with an election

Any attempt to distort an election, to vote in someone else’s place, or to circumvent one-vote-per-voter.

Security

Any attempt at unauthorized access, intrusive probing or load-testing the service. Good-faith security research is welcome: tell us before you test.

Automation and resale

Bulk automated extraction, and resale of the service without our written agreement.

What we take on

We operate the service with professional care: publishing the register, ballot secrecy enforced by the cryptographic protocol, and the result computed by an open-source library anyone can verify. We never interfere with the content of an election, nor with its result. The commitments specific to the Official offer are described on the Pricing page and apply only to elections marked Official.

Service availability

The service is in alpha: it is currently free and uncapped, it may change without notice, and data preservation is not guaranteed. Outside the Official offer we give no availability undertaking: the service is provided on a best-effort basis. Maintenance interruptions may happen; we do our best to announce them and to keep them out of voting periods.

Personal data

The processing is described in the privacy policy. For an election’s electoral roll, the organizer is the data controller and we act as processor; the agreement required by article 28 GDPR, published on this site, governs that relationship.

Intellectual property

The libraries the platform runs on are published under their respective licences. The name, the domain name and the site’s content remain the property of Condorcet.Vote. You keep ownership of the content you enter and grant us only the right to host it, display it and publish it in the register, as far as running your election requires.

Paid offers

The Free offer requires no payment. Marking an election as Official is paid in prepaid credits, whose prices, quoted excluding VAT, appear on the Pricing page. Ordering, payment and invoicing are covered by separate terms of sale.

Liability

We are answerable for failures to meet our own obligations. We are not answerable for the decisions taken as a result of an election, for the composition of the electoral roll, for compliance with the organizer’s internal rules, nor for the loss of an admin secret or a vote link. Towards a business user, our liability is limited to the amount they paid us over the twelve months preceding the triggering event, and indirect damages are excluded. Mandatory consumer-protection provisions remain applicable and are unaffected by this limitation.

Suspension and termination

You may stop using the service at any time and ask us to delete your account. We may suspend an access or an election in the event of a serious breach of these terms or manifestly unlawful use, and we tell you unless the law forbids it. Deleting an account erases its personal data; elections already published stay public and their register is kept, with no identity attached, as the register’s integrity requires.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by French law. Failing an amicable settlement, any dispute falls to the courts of Paris, subject to the mandatory rules of jurisdiction applicable to consumers.