Election software for election services companies
BallotLink treats the election services company as its own role, not as a variety of management company. You can carry out the administration of an HOA election and serve as its Inspector of Elections — a combination available to you because you are independent of the association. Pricing is per election, so running many of them is the normal case rather than the exception.
Why your independence is the product
A management company acts as the association's agent, which is what rules it out as Inspector of Elections. An independent election services company does not, and can serve.
This is the distinction that separates you from the management company competing for the same work, and BallotLink is built around it: the election services company is a first-class role in the software, with the ballot-management functions an inspector needs. A management company or a managed association, by contrast, is blocked in software from administering or billing an election for itself.
California Civil Code §5110(b) — inspector independence; §5120(c) — ballot controlWhich means you can say something to a prospective association that a management company cannot: the person holding the ballots has no stake in who wins. See theinspector-side detail for what that looks like in practice.
The problem election services companies deal with today
You run the same election over and over for different associations, and the tooling makes each one feel like the first.
Each association arrives with its own rules, its own voting method, its own roster format, and its own idea of how ballots should go out. The work that actually earns the fee — being the independent, defensible party in the room — gets buried under assembling ballots and chasing paper. And the more associations you take on, the worse the ratio gets.
What BallotLink does for you
It makes the repeatable parts repeatable, and keeps the parts the law reserves for the inspector in your hands.
- A role built for you. The election services company is a distinct role in the product, not a management company account with different labels.
- Run any of the four voting methods — plurality, ranked, cumulative, approval — per election, so each association gets what its rules require.
- Ballots by email and on paper. Printed ballots are US Letter PDFs stating the voting period.
- Write-in resolution stays with you as the inspector.
- An audit record on every ballot view, per association, per election.
- Results only after you finalize — nothing exists to leak early.
How to get started
Get in touch and we set your company up as an election services company, then you bring associations onto it as you win them.
- Tell us about your book of work — roughly how many elections a year, and the voting methods you run.
- We set up your election services company account.
- You create each election, set its method, and add that association's election rules for distribution.
- Ballots go out, members vote, you resolve write-ins and finalize.
What it costs you
Per election. Not per association, not per door, not a platform seat you pay for in the quiet months.
Per-election numbers are on the pricing page.
The objection we hear most
"Our independence is what we sell. Does putting the election on someone else's software compromise it?"
It shouldn't, and the design is meant to reinforce it rather than dilute it. The ballot-control restriction that keeps a board out of the ballots is the same mechanism that keeps everyone else out: the functions belong to the inspector role, which is you. We are the software vendor, not a party to the election, and nothing in the product gives the association or its management company a way in. What you should not expect is for software to be evidence of independence on its own — that remains a matter of who you are and how you conduct yourself.
Questions election services companies ask
Why can an election services company serve as inspector when a management company cannot?
Because independence is the test. A management company acts as the association’s agent. An independent election services company does not, which is what makes it eligible to serve as Inspector of Elections.
Can we run elections for associations we do not otherwise work with?
Yes. BallotLink models the election services company as its own role, independent of any single association or management company.
Can we act as inspector and handle the administration too?
Yes — that combination is what the role exists for. What the software blocks is a management company or managed association administering or billing an election for itself.
How are we billed across many associations?
Per election, not per association and not per door. An election services company running many elections pays for the elections it runs.
Do we control the ballots, or does the association?
You do, when you are serving as inspector. Ballot management functions are restricted to the Inspector of Elections and enforced on the server.
What voting methods can we offer our clients?
Plurality, ranked, cumulative, and approval. The method is set per election, so different associations can run different methods.