This page outlines what you can expect and how to prepare for a successful election night.
Get Users to Results Faster
Make it easy for residents to find election results quickly - especially during peak traffic. Visit our Best practices page to review what you can do to get your content ready!
Caching for Performance and Reliability
To maintain uptime during high traffic, results pages are cached and delivered globally.
What’s happening:
- Azure Front Door caches result pages across multiple regions
- Optimized to support high traffic volumes on election night
What to expect:
- Results are typically visible within a few minutes
- Some users may briefly see slightly older results
- Full consistency across all users can take several minutes
Best practice:
- Display a timestamp (e.g. “Results last updated at 9:15 PM”)
- Clearly communicates data freshness to residents
Why it matters:
- Prevents downtime and slow performance
- Ensures a consistent experience during peak demand
Supported Integration Approaches
To ensure performance and reliability, only specific integration methods are supported during election events.
Preferred: iFrame Embedding
- Isolates third-party performance risks
- Protects platform stability
- Not impacted by caching
Also Supported:
- Vendor-provided JavaScript embeds (must be validated)
- Outbound links to external election platforms
- Static content (pages or PDFs hosted in Govstack)
Not Supported
- Custom API integrations
- Direct integrations with election or voting systems
These approaches introduce risk to performance, scalability, and supportability during peak demand and cannot be supported.
Change Freeze Recommendation
To minimize risk during this high-traffic event:
- Avoid introducing new changes or integrations
- Implement a change freeze at least 48 hours before election night
This helps ensure a stable and predictable experience.
Why This Approach Matters
Election night is a high-visibility event with no tolerance for downtime.
Our approach prioritizes:
- Uptime over real-time refresh
- Performance over complexity
- Clear support and escalation paths
This ensures your site remains available and your team is supported when it matters most.