Legal, privacy & cookies

Last updated: 17 October 2026 (added optional 1992 "then vs today" questions)

1. Disclaimer

• Unofficial. ifivoted.com is an unofficial simulation and opinion website. It is not an official election, referendum, ballot, petition or census. Votes cast here do not count and have no legal or political effect.
• Not affiliated. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), any government department or body, or any political party, candidate or campaign.
• Not representative. Results are self-selected and for interest only. They are not an opinion poll or survey under any recognised methodology, are not weighted, and must not be presented as representative of South African voters or as predicting any election result. Do not publish or broadcast them as a poll.
• Historical data. Official historical results are reproduced from public sources (see About & sources) for comparison. We try to be accurate, but transcription errors are possible. For authoritative figures, consult the IEC.
• Bot classification is automated and approximate.
• No warranty. The site is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any loss arising from use of the site or reliance on its content.
• Acceptable use. Do not attack, overload or misuse the service, or use it to harass, intimidate or mislead anyone about real elections. We may remove votes, polls or access to keep the site working and fair.
• Party names and marks belong to their owners and are used only descriptively, to identify historical ballot options.

2. Privacy notice (POPIA)

We designed ifivoted.com to work without knowing who you are. This notice explains our processing in line with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

What we collect when you vote

• Your vote choice and the election or poll it belongs to.
• A hashed device identifier: a random ID stored in a cookie on your device, combined with the election ID and a secret salt and stored only as a one-way hash.
• A hashed device signature: coarse signals (such as screen size, time zone, language, browser user agent and the network address of the request) combined with a secret salt and stored only as a one-way hash. We do not store your IP address or these signals in raw form.
• A human/bot flag, with a short reason code (for example "no-turnstile" or "ua:curl").
• A timestamp.
• Optionally, the province you choose to tell us.
• On the 1992 referendum page only, these optional "then vs today" answers: whether you voted in 1992 (voted / could have voted but didn't / not eligible / prefer not to say), how you voted or would have voted then (Yes / No / prefer not to say), any reasons you tick for not voting or for changing your answer (from a fixed list), and the province you lived in in 1992 (one of the four pre-1994 provinces, outside South Africa, or "I don't remember"). You can choose "Prefer not to say" or skip these. They are stored only as these fixed codes, linked to the same anonymous vote record, and published only as aggregate counts.
• On the optional World wish vote (/world/) only: for each country you choose to answer (United States, United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Kenya, Australia), your fixed party choice from that country's list (including "Other", "I wouldn't vote" and, outside the US, "Prefer not to say"), with the same hashed device identifier, hashed device signature, human/bot flag and timestamp as above. No province, no free text.
• A hashed link identifier (added with the World wish vote): the same random cookie ID, combined with a different secret salt and stored only as a one-way hash. It is the same for all of your answers on this device, so we can count, in aggregate, how answers to different questions relate. When you save a world answer, your earlier SA answers on the same device get this link hash too.

Your answers together form a political-opinion profile for your device

Taken together, the answers linked by that hashed device ID (for example your 2024 re-vote, your 1992 "then vs today" answers and your world wish votes) amount to a profile of political opinions for that device. POPIA treats political persuasion as special personal information. We keep this as safe as we can:

• Every question is optional. All answers are fixed choices, with no free text and no names, emails, phone numbers or exact locations.
• The only link between answers is the salted, hashed device ID from your cookie. We cannot see who you are, and we never try to find out.
• Minimum-10 rule: we only publish aggregate totals. On the World wish vote and in every comparison between questions, any group, cell or combination with fewer than 10 answers is shown as "<10". Where needed, one more small cell is hidden too, so a hidden number can't be worked out by subtraction. Individual records and device profiles are never published or exposed through the API.
• This data is never sold, rented, shared for marketing or used for advertising, political targeting or campaigning.
• You can clear the iv_did cookie at any time. That breaks the link for anything you answer afterwards.

Some people may regard past voting behaviour as sensitive, or as revealing political opinions. That's why every one of these answers is optional, uses fixed choices with no free text, and is never linked to your identity, which we don't collect.

We do not ask for, and do not want, your name, ID number, email address, phone number or exact location. Do not enter personal information anywhere on the site.

Why

To count votes, keep to one vote per device, separate human from automated votes, and show aggregate results. We only publish aggregate totals.

Human check

Vote pages use Cloudflare Turnstile to tell humans from bots. Turnstile is provided by Cloudflare, Inc. and processes technical browser signals under Cloudflare's Turnstile privacy addendum. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which may process network data, such as IP addresses, to deliver and protect the service. This can include processing outside South Africa, under Cloudflare's safeguards.

What we don't do

• No selling, renting or sharing of data for marketing.
• No advertising, analytics or social-media tracking scripts.
• No attempt to identify individual voters, and no use of the per-device answer profile for anything except publishing aggregate totals (minimum 10).
• No selling of any data, ever.

Retention

Hashed vote records are kept for as long as the relevant simulation or poll is shown on the site, and may be deleted or aggregated at any time.

Your rights

Because we hold no identity information, we usually cannot link a record to you. If you believe we hold personal information about you, you may ask for access, correction or deletion, or object to processing, by emailing [email protected]. You may also complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa): inforegulator.org.za.

Children

The site is intended for a general audience. Please don't submit any personal information if you are under 18.

3. Cookies

We use no advertising or analytics cookies. You can delete cookies in your browser at any time. If you do, you may be able to vote again, and that vote may be flagged.

4. Contact

[email protected]