Election night is one of the highest-traffic and most critical moments for your website. Govstack is designed to ensure your site remains available, responsive, and supported throughout peak demand.
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.
Best practices:
- Use a dedicated election page or microsite
- Create a simple, memorable URL (e.g. yourcity.ca/elections)
- Add a homepage banner linking directly to results
- Minimise clicks—ensure results are accessible in one step
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
- Optimised 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
Election Night Support
Our Support team is fully mobilised to ensure your site remains stable and supported throughout election night.
Support Coverage
- Extended support hours on election night
- Coverage available until 1:00 AM EST (10:00 PM PST)
- Additional coverage provided as needed for critical events
How to Contact Support
Support Portal (Recommended)
👉 Submit a support request
- Log and track requests in real time
- For urgent issues, set Urgency Level to “Emergency”
Phone Support
- 1-866-691-5528
If your call is not answered immediately:
- Leave a detailed message
- Your voicemail will be converted into a support ticket
Support Levels
Govstack Sites
- Full support coverage
- Priority handling for critical issues
i:Create Sites
- Supported on a best-effort basis
- Response and resolution times are not guaranteed
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 minimise 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 prioritises:
- 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.