How verification works

Verification shows that an account belongs to a real, registered person, so the verified results can be trusted. It is optional: you can answer and see results without it.

Participate first, verify later

Everyone starts as a regular account. Your answers count in the “everyone” results right away. When you verify, they also count in the “verified accounts” results.

Colorado first

Verification starts with Colorado. Other states will follow. If you live somewhere else, you can still use every other part of the app. Is your state not open yet? Help bring it on board.

The steps

In the Android app, open Account, then Verify.
Make sure your legal name and home address are saved. These are what your registration is matched against.
The app opens the Colorado Secretary of State’s own voter-registration lookup. You type your details there yourself and complete its “I’m not a robot” check. We never see what you type into the state’s page.
The app reads five things from the result: the name, birth year, voter ID, registration status and residential address. It shows them to you and asks, “Is this you?”
When you confirm, our server checks that the registration is active, is in Colorado, and matches your saved legal name and home address (house number, street name and ZIP code).

Verifying on the web

You can also verify in the web app, on a laptop or a phone, after saving your legal name and home address there.

The web app opens the same Colorado Secretary of State lookup in a new tab. You type your details there yourself and complete its “I’m not a robot” check.
When it shows your registration, save the result page to your device: on a laptop, save it as a web page (HTML); in Chrome on Android, use Download page.
Upload the saved page in the web app. Our server reads the same five things from it and runs the same checks as the app. On the web there is no separate “Is this you?” step: uploading the page is your confirmation.

The uploaded page is read in memory and then thrown away. It is never saved, logged or kept, and only the same things listed below are kept. Pages over 2 MB, and files that are not web pages, are refused unread.

On an iPhone

You can do everything else on your iPhone, including answering questions and seeing results. Only the verification step needs a laptop or an Android phone, because Safari on an iPhone (and iPad) can’t save the result page in a form we can read. That is a limit of iPhone Safari, not a block on you. You can verify from:

A laptop: yours, a friend’s, or one at a library. Open the web app, sign in to your own account, and follow the steps above.
A friend’s Android phone: use the web app in Chrome, or the Android app, and sign in to your own account. Sign out when you are done.

Once you are verified, keep using your iPhone as before. Your answers count in the verified results.

What we keep, and what we don’t

We keep that your account is verified, the state, and the date.
We keep your voter ID only as a scrambled code made with a secret key. It cannot be turned back into your voter ID, and it is never shown to anyone. It exists only so one registration can verify only one account.
The name, birth year and address read from the registration are checked and then thrown away. They are never stored.
Your party affiliation and any dates on the registration page are never read or sent at all.

One person, one verified account

A registration can verify only one account. If you change the legal name on a verified account, it goes back to unverified until you verify again with the new name. The app warns you before that happens.

Not a government service

Count My Opinion USA is independent. We are not part of the Colorado Secretary of State or any government agency, and verification does not change anything about your registration.