This page explains the process of running a single, one-off vote. These are the simplest kind, and they’ll always be available for anyone to use, free of charge.

To create a single vote/election, go to the relevant part of the app and click “create new”. You’ll be given a few options, to determine how this particular election works. Note that we’ll use ‘poll’, ‘vote’ and ‘election’ interchangeably; you could use this system to elect people, or choose between a variety of different options, or just to collect feedback.

The first choice, is how long the poll will run for. The minimum is 5 minutes and the maximum 1 week. If you need longer, simply announce the election/decision ahead of time, and create the poll a week before the results are needed. With the option to set a deadline for as little as 5 minutes, you have the facility for very quick iterations of decision-making, usually in the context of a small group.

The second choice is about the options available to respondents. You’re welcome to split the election into various parts, for example simultaneously asking 2 or more separate questions, each with 2 or more options. Respondents will be able to vote on all options across all questions, each drawing from a single pool of voting tokens.

Thirdly, you’ll be able to set how many tokens each participant gets. 1,000 each is the standard, though you may want more for each participant. This is likely to be useful if the election has multiple questions with many options each, and is spread over a relatively long timeframe. You could also set it as fewer than 1,000, which would be useful for shorter and simpler polls.

The last option is whether you’ll be able to vote yourself, or whether it’s organised by you, for the benefit of others (e.g. a teacher for their students).

A permanent feature of these polls, and all polls in groups, is the option to “flag” a question. As well as being able to vote for or against each option on a poll, you’ll be able to vote on whether a question, or an option within a question, is badly phrased, manipulative, or incomplete.

It’s a common tactic, in the manipulation of democratic processes, for special interests to offer a range of options that all serve their purposes. The aim is to give the illusion of democracy and avoid open revolt, while still getting their way – whichever way the majority votes, the special interest get their way.

Having a feedback mechanism lets everyone see not just how popular each option is, but whether people think the set of questions and options is fair, clear, complete and neutrally conveyed. This means that polls will become more fair, clear and neutral over time. Manipulative behaviour is punished, and honest actors get the feedback they need to make better polls.

Because Forum runs on decentralised protocols, the end of a poll works a bit differently than it would for a centralised service. Once everyone’s votes are locked in and the deadline is passed, each person’s version of the app will try to communicate with the others, to agree on what the results are. Technically this is called a “consensus” algorithm; the different devices are seeking to achieve consensus, with respect to poll/election results.

How long it takes to achieve this depends on when people have the Forum app open, and an internet connection. If you and 10 other people participated in an election, your device will reach out to the other devices directly, without going through any centralised server. Say device B is on, and responsive. Your device (A) will share information about how you voted, and B will share information about how they voted.

Let’s say B goes offline, and then C comes online. Your device (A) now has the information about how you voted, and how B voted. It shares this with C, so now both A and C have all the information about how people A (yourself), B and C have voted. The process repeats as different devices come on/offline, until all devices have all the information, and can agree on how everyone voted. From here, they add up the different votes (and “feedback” votes on options/questions), and display the result. This will be saved securely to your device.