: Users who have not voted are told they have already voted

Editing a poll

If you have a poll active on your website and then you change the poll question and responses, you should also reset the poll. Just changing the vote counts to zero is not enough, internally the votes will still be stored. On the edit poll screen, you should see a link labeled "Reset votes to zero". Clicking that link will reset the internal poll votes correctly.

Proxies

Users can sometimes be connected to the Internet using a proxy to accelerate their connection. Many users who are connected to the Internet using that proxy will have the same IP address. Therefore, if a user connected to the proxy votes on your poll, any other user connected to that proxy will not be able to vote because they will have the same IP address as the other user who already voted.

This can sometimes create a problem for AOL users because AOL uses a proxy for their users. More information on the AOL proxy.

Public Computers

When a user connects to the Internet they are supposed to be assigned a unique IP address by their ISP (Internet Service Provider). At a public facility where there are a large number of computers, such as at a library or college, the ISP may have set up the system so that all of the computers at that location share the same IP address.

The poll system checks the user's IP address to see if they have already voted. If a user at a public computer votes on the poll, no one else will be able to vote on the same poll from the same public computer. Therefore, some user's accessing the poll from a public computer with a shared IP address may be told they have already voted.

If a large number of your users will be accessing your poll from a public computer, it is recommended that you allow multiple votes on your poll. That feature can be turned on or off in the Poll Settings section of the Website Toolbox members area.

Please keep in mind that Public Computers and Proxies are general weaknesses of using IP Addresses to identify a user. These are not problems within Website Toolbox or our services. The same weaknesses will be present in any poll program.