Vote verification in Dapple is how a public Gallery confirms a vote came from a real, unique person before it counts toward the final result. When Allow voting before sign in is turned on for a gallery, a visitor can vote straight away — the vote is recorded provisionally, without being tied to an identity — then a pop-up asks them to verify it by email, or by signing in with Google or Microsoft. Once verified, the vote is marked Verified in Voting Results, giving the organisation confidence the result reflects real people rather than spam or duplicate votes.
What does a voter see on the public gallery page?
A voter reaches the gallery's public link and sees every approved item — the nominees — laid out as cards, using whatever title, summary, and image the project set up in Card Design. Voters browse the cards and select the one (or ones, if Max Votes Per Voter is set above 1) they want to vote for. No sign-in is needed to reach this page or to browse it — sign-in only comes into play once a vote is cast, and only if the gallery is configured that way.
How does a vote get counted before it's verified?
The moment a voter selects an item, Dapple records the vote as provisional. It's added to that item's total vote count straight away, so Voting Results reflects activity in real time, but at this point the vote isn't yet linked to any voter — it exists on its own, not attached to an identity, which is why it doesn't yet count as verified.
What happens in the verification pop-up?
Immediately after a voter casts their vote, a pop-up asks them to verify it. They can:
Enter their email address, or
Sign in with Google, or
Sign in with Microsoft.
If the identity they use isn't already linked to a Dapple account, Dapple creates one automatically. A new account is then prompted to add a name before the process finishes. Once the voter has completed this step, their provisional vote is updated in the backend and marked as verified — now tied to a real, identifiable voter.
How does this differ from requiring sign-in before voting?
The provisional-then-verify flow above only happens when Allow voting before sign in (Rules & Moderation) is switched on. The alternative is to require sign-in first:
Setting | When the voter signs in | What this means for the vote |
On (Allow voting before sign in) | After casting a vote, via the verification pop-up | Recorded as provisional the instant it's cast; becomes verified once the voter confirms their identity |
Off | Before they're able to vote at all | Every vote is already tied to a signed-in identity, so it's verified from the moment it's cast |
Either way, Dapple also backs voting with browser/session controls, IP auditing, rate limits, and CAPTCHA — verification confirms identity, these controls guard against automated abuse.
How do I see which votes are verified?
Open Voting Results on the gallery. The Votes tab ranks every item with separate Verified votes and Total votes columns, plus a share-of-vote percentage — the gap between the two tells you how many votes are still provisional. The Voters tab lists each individual voter's email address alongside a Verified status badge. Export either view with Copy CSV.
Best practice
Turn on Allow voting before sign in for lower-friction voting where turnout matters more than every vote being pre-verified — Public voting awards are the typical case.
Turn it off if a vote must be verified before it's cast at all, not after — for example where the result needs to be fully defensible with no unverified activity in the numbers.
Let voters know their vote won't count toward the final result until they verify it — this reduces abandoned, unverified votes sitting in Voting Results.
Check the gap between Verified and Total votes in Voting Results before publishing a result, rather than relying on the total alone.
Remember verification confirms identity, not intent — Max Votes Per Voter and Changing a vote still govern what a verified voter is allowed to do.