Ballot box

Why the box is shuffled

This is the one thing that separates a secret ballot from a show of hands with extra steps. People vote in the order they are listed. If the ballots then came out of the box in the order they went in, the first one opened would be the first person's, the last one the last person's, and anybody paying attention could reconstruct the entire vote from the reveal. So the box is shuffled before a single ballot is opened, and the order they come out in tells nobody anything.

The other half of it is that nothing records who voted for whom in the first place. A vote goes into the box as a name and not as a pair, so even the page does not know. There is no undo for that reason: an undo would have to remember whose turn it was, and then the thing everybody was promised would not be true any more.

End-of-term awards and elimination rounds

The two things this gets used for pull in opposite directions. Awards want several short votes in a row and a slow, enjoyable reveal: most likely to be late, best excuse, quietest laugh. Type the categories once and each one runs with the same room and the same rules, the title above the ballot so nobody votes on the wrong thing.

Elimination games want the opposite: one vote, fast, and usually with self-voting allowed because voting for yourself is a legitimate move. That switch is in the Rules tab. If what you want is a vote between options rather than between people, the majority vote is the page for that, and if you are running a hidden-role game in the first place, the secret role cards deal the roles this eventually votes somebody out of.

Opening them slowly, on purpose

The reveal draws one ballot at a time and there is a button to open them all if you are in a hurry, but the slow version is the one worth using in a room. A running tally that moves by one is the only part of a vote that is actually dramatic, and it gives the person who is behind by two with three left something to sit through. Announcing a total instead throws that away in one line.

Everything here stays on the device: the names come from the shared roster, the categories you typed are kept in this browser, and the ballots exist only while the box is open. A share link carries the two rules and nothing else at all, so a link you send somebody opens an empty box with your settings in it.

Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for

The tool runs entirely in your browser. There is no account, nothing you make is uploaded, and nothing you type is sent anywhere or put into a link.

The page itself is not silent, though: it carries advertising code and a visit counter that sets no cookie, and the cookie page says exactly what each of those does.

It works on the one device in front of you, passed around or propped where everybody can see it. There are no rooms, no codes and no accounts, because there is no server behind this site for any of that to run through.

This page remembers your settings in your browser under pph.ballot.rules and pph.ballot.awards, and nowhere else. Clearing your site data for papercarnival.com removes it.

Player names are kept under pph.players so every tool with players reads the same list. They stay in this browser and never reach a link.