Magic Links make online voting unbeatably easy for voters: one click from the email inbox automatically opens the personal voting access - no password, no user name, no form. Another click casts the vote. It takes less than 10 seconds.
With Magic Links, voters log directly into their personal NemoVote account with a single click - no password, no username. It takes less than 10 seconds from email inbox to cast ballot.
The result: support requests for login problems fall from around 5% to 0.2% of all participants. Magic Links have been standard for all NemoVote elections since June 2025 - and have already largely replaced traditional logins for 93% of customers.
Many organizations are familiar with the situation: the election is open and shortly afterwards, support requests start piling up. Access data has been typed in incorrectly, passwords forgotten, usernames mixed up.
In elections, this leads to a particularly unpleasant triad:
Traditional login systems were developed for platforms that are used on a daily basis. An election once a year represents a completely different usage scenario - and requires a different solution.
Magic links are personalized login URLs in which the access data is technically embedded directly. Instead of entering a user name and password, a voter clicks on a button in the email - and automatically lands in their own account.
The foundation of secure online elections remains completely intact:
NemoVote introduced Magic Links in April 2025 and they have been standard for all new elections since June 2025. There are four variants - depending on the scenario.
Magic Links work in all election scenarios - each with a slightly different role.
Voters receive a Magic Link by email and can vote at their own pace. Alternatively, they can request a new link at any time via the self-service page - even if the first email was overlooked. No need to call support.
The election management creates a test ballot, voters receive a Magic Link for the test ballot. They receive the same mechanism for the actual election - same email address, same procedure, same link via reminder if required. No confusion, no new learning curve.
Online participants receive Magic Links by email - on-site participants receive QR codes based on the same principle: one secure, individual access per person. Both groups end up with identical ballots.
In practice, around 93% of NemoVote customers currently use Magic Links as their preferred login method. Only around 5% still use a user name and password out of habit or for specific edge cases, and around 2% use SSO (single sign-on).
Magic links are technically the equivalent of "username + password" - only encrypted and integrated into a URL. Anyone who has access to a person's email inbox already had access to their access data. This does not change with magic links.
Important: Magic Links are optimized for maximum simplicity. For high-security setups - such as very critical political elections - NemoVote recommends combinations of QR codes and additional two-factor authentication.
Magic Links are fully active out of the box in NemoVote - election administrators do not need to configure anything to use them.
Only if the internal IT department has stricter requirements - e.g. shorter validity, one-time links or MFA - can these parameters be customized.
Magic links are part of a flexible authentication concept in NemoVote. Here is an overview of when which method makes sense:
| Method | Simplicity | When does it make sense? |
|---|---|---|
| Magic Link | ★★★★★ | Standard for all elections - async, live and hybrid |
| Username + password | ★★☆☆☆ | Edge cases, systems with existing password infrastructure |
| One-time code (OTP) | ★★★☆☆ | If additional manual entry is required |
| SSO | ★★★★☆ | Organizations with an existing identity infrastructure (e.g. Microsoft, Google) |
In practice, magic links are the default for most organizations. SSO and classic logins remain for special cases where IT compliance or company guidelines require it. Magic Links and SSO are independent methods - not a combination, but alternatives.
Magic Links are not a minor feature update - they are a fundamental improvement to voter participation and the voter experience. Anyone who has ever voted with a single click immediately understands why this should be the new standard.
Whether it's asynchronous member voting, live committee voting or a hybrid general meeting: with Magic Links, the journey from email inbox to cast ballot is completed in under 10 seconds. For voters of all ages and technical affinities. Without any support effort. Without password chaos.
NemoVote is the only GDPR-compliant online voting tool where Magic Links are active for all customers by default - as an integral part of the authentication concept, not as an add-on.