Anonymous Voting System

Jan Wey. janwey at fsfe.org
Mon Mar 23 21:01:53 UTC 2020


Hello everyone,

Due to not being able to gather in groups right now, I am currently in need to
organize some online sitting of a group (25 ppl), probably via jitsi-meet.

At some point, there will be votes regarding numerous things, which should be
anonymous. Initially, I thought about simply using Dudle[0] (*NOT* doodle),
where participants would simply not give their names (hence, anonymous).

However, this comes with several issues. For one, we would be unable to confirm
that everyone casted their vote. Secondly, if someone voted twice, we could not
see that either. So there is some potential for manipulation.

In order to avoid these issues, I came up with a simple system:
- Moderator inputs 25 pseudonyms into some online tool (e.g. animal names).
- Each participant opens a secondary URL to the tool, which randomly assigns
  them one of the 25 pseudonyms. Every participant should receive a different
  pseudonym, such that all 25 ppl have one unique pseudonym which is unknown to
  the moderator (and to everyone else).
- The Moderator hence knows all 25 pseudonyms, however he/she does not know, who
  has been assigned to which pseudonym.
- When filling out the poll, every participant gives their pseudonym. That way,
  double-votes can be excluded and votes from pseudonyms not in the list can be
  eliminated when counting.

Now, while such a tool sounds simple in principle, I cannot find such thing out
there...

- Let a moderator give it a list of pseudonyms via some admin-interface
- print one of the 25 names, when opening a second URL. This should consider,
  that some names may be taken by others already.

Does anyone here know of such tool OR has a better idea to organize an anonymous
online vote/poll?

Thank you very much in advance! Kind regards,
Jan

-- 
Jan Weymeirsch (former intern)
passionate european & FOSS enthusiast
Encrypt your mail! http://jan.weymeirs.ch/gpg


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