Loomio

[Feature Proposal] Hiding vote results until vote closes

FK Florian Kohrt Public Seen by 85

Some types of votes might benefit from not knowing the preliminary vote result. Particularly this includes formal role elections, but also cases where preliminary result knowledge negatively influences the quality of the outcome, such as

  • questions that rely on the wisdom of the crowd (reason)

  • newly formed (unexperienced) groups or groups with new members

Additionally, revealing the result before the vote closes may lead to deanonymization of voters if conducting a "live vote", such as during meetings, where people vote sequentially. Hiding results until a vote closes then also makes sure anonymous votes really are anonymous.

This has been proposed before (here and here), but I wanted to bring it to attention as our group had recently experienced that need again.

Hiding the results until a votes closes may also be preferable to just hiding it until one has personally voted, in my opinion. But that may be left as a choice to the user by implementing both.

RG

Robert Guthrie Thu 6 Feb 2020 10:47PM

I agree, we'll be adressing this in our 2020 refactor of our schema. I've got so much feedback on the current system I think we can pretty accurately describe how the thing should be. It's not a quick fix, but rather part of the plan for the year to fix this and a few other issues with the current system.

FK

Florian Kohrt Mon 10 Feb 2020 2:55PM

That's fantastic! I was just thinking if it sometimes makes sense to reveal who has already voted when voting anonymously.