.vote Domain: An Address for Elections and Ballots
The .vote extension entered the root zone on 13 February 2014; its ICANN agreement is dated 21 November 2013 and the contracting party is Monolith Registry LLC, part of Identity Digital. Election campaigns, referendum information sites, association and chamber elections, shareholder ballots and participatory decision tools all take names here.
The agreement carries no additional public interest commitment and no community section, so there is neither a requirement of political use nor a rule shutting out non-political use. On 14 August 2026 the zone held 9,329 registrations. Try a campaign, an organisation or a ballot name as the root and compare on the .vote domain search page.
Three extensions in this range share the idea of voting, and they are not the same thing. .vote and .voto answer to the same registry operator, carry an agreement of the same date and entered the root on the same day; the only difference between them is language. .voting belongs to a different registry operator, has its own agreement and runs a far smaller zone. The decision rule: choose the first for an English-speaking audience and the second for Spanish and Portuguese markets; look at the third if you want to stress the act rather than the process.
.VOTE Domain at a Glance
- Registry operator Monolith Registry LLC (Identity Digital)
- Root zone entry 13 February 2014
- Agreement 21 November 2013; carries no additional public interest commitment
- Language twin Same registry and same agreement date as .voto
- Zone size 9,329 registrations (14 August 2026)
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .vote domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.vote Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$37.99 /year -
Transfer
$90.99 /year -
Renewal
$97.99 /year -
Restore
$199.90 -
Late Renewal
$15.36
Included With Every .vote Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.vote Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .vote domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .vote address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .vote domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $15.36 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .vote returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.vote Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.vote Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .vote domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.vote Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .vote Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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It can. The agreement contains no community section and no additional public interest commitment, so no rule confines use to politics. The zone also holds association and chamber elections, shareholder ballots, residents' decisions, internal staff surveys and product votes. The decision rule: if the function of your page is to collect a preference the extension explains itself, and if it is not, the extension stays decorative.
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The difference is linguistic rather than legal: both answer to the same registry operator, carry an agreement of the same date and entered the root on the same day. The choice follows the language of your audience entirely. English-speaking campaigns read naturally with the first, Spanish and Portuguese markets with the second. If you work in both languages, taking both and forwarding one is a common solution; review the other zone on the .voto domain search page.
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Election addresses look short-lived but carry archive value: links, press citations and search results stay alive for years. If you drop the address, a third party can take it and point those same links at entirely different content. Two options work in practice: renew the address and forward it to an archive page, or set a permanent redirect to the organisation's main site. In either case, leave automatic renewal switched on.
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Three things stand out. An encrypted connection is mandatory, because participation data and often identity details are collected; pick a suitable option from the SSL certificate page. The second is load resilience: voting traffic peaks in short bursts. The third is record keeping; because results can be challenged, system logs need to be retained.
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The registry supports internationalised domain names, and IANA publishes a large number of language tables for this extension, the widest coverage in this range. In practice every character in a name must come from the same script. For campaigns that want to keep local spelling, the practical method is to take the accented name and also register the unaccented form, then forward one to the other.
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