(Note: polls must be stopped manually)
Your name and e-mail address are used when sending e-mail to voters. Your name should be recognizable to voters, and the e-mail address must work, because CIVS emails you the information needed to control the poll. Make sure your spam filter does not block mail from civs@cornell.edu (or check your spam folder if the mail does not arrive!).


Private

Each voter receives their own unique URL for voting, and can only vote once. The voters' email addresses must be provided to the system so it can tell them their voting URL, but the system forgets their addresses immediately after the email is sent. You can add voters after the poll has been created.

Public

There is a single URL that any voter can use to cast their vote, and it is your job to distribute it. However, there is only a token attempt to prevent multiple voting, based on voters' IP addresses. If you want to make sure that voters only vote once, use a private poll instead.

More options (mouse over each check box for more information)

Have CIVS publicize this poll on its home page.
Make this a test poll: read all votes from a file.
Do not release results to all voters.
By default, the results of a poll are visible to all voters. Select this option to restrict the visibility to some smaller set of people.

Enable detailed ballot reporting.

Voters are not anonymous if this is checked, nor does the server discard voter email addresses as it normally does. Voters are warned about this lack of anonymity. Multiple votes from a single IP address are allowed if this is a public poll.

Allow voters to write in new choices.
Present choices on voting page in exactly the given order.
Allow voters to select “no opinion” for some choices.
Enforce proportional representation [more information]

rank of their favorite choice
combined weights of selected choices
Turn off IP address checking so multiple voters can vote from the same network address.

Make sure your e-mail address is correct, because poll information will be emailed to you. Voters will not be informed of the poll's existence until you respond to this e-mail message.