Tyranny of Majority

Tyranny of Majority is a collective decision-making tool. Do polls, vote on issues and find people with similar opinions.

It is free to use so go ahead and try it out, but keep in mind that this is still under development and far from finished so don't be surprised by occasional bugs and oddities.

Here is how it works: in there front page there is a list of collectives. Collectives contain questions/issues on which users can vote (yes/no/abstain). Votes are counted for the approval of each question (though only votes by collective members are counted).

This way you can find out people's opinions on issues and have your opinion counted too. This can be used for actual decision-making voting, though then votes by only those who are eligible to vote should be counted and that is not yet implemented (though there are some workarounds).

Another feature is that you can find out who has answered questions similarly.

It's not necessary to register and even when registering it is not mandatory to give any personal info. But registering is recommended, it allows to use most of the features.

Here is what you can do

  • Without registering
    • Browse collectives and check out approvals for questions
  • After registering
    • Can answer questions and search users with similar opinions
  • After setting e-mail address
    • Reset password in case you forget it
  • After setting name
    • Can join collectives
    • Can create your own collectives
  • After joining a collective
    • Your votes are included when approvals are counted
    • Can comment your vote and comment is shown to other users
    • Can vote in elections

Disclaimer: This is still early beta (that is, still being developed and far from finished), meaning that it is not yet fully functional and still has plenty of bugs and problems. In my limited testing it seems to be at least somewhat usable, but better not expect flawless experience yet. If/when you find bugs or problems, please let me know: jln@iki.fi

Counting approvals

  • Yes vs. No votes to a question.

Calculating matches

  • Which users have most similar opinions to yours.

Elections

  • When there are more than two options and simple yes or no answer just does not cut it, things get much more complicated. See ElectionMethods.

Advanced use

Have dozens of questions and entering them manually is slow? Use QuestionFeeder.

Building blocks

Grey matter upgrades

Provided mostly by O'Reilly, thanks for their excellent technical books provided without DRM, available in multiple e-book formats.

Other publishers

Other related links

Other voting tools

  • Agreedis Voting with emphasis on finding a compromise that most can agree on.
  • Helios Verifiable online voting with strong cryptography. Open source.
  • LiquidFeedback Open-source tool utilizing Schultze method. Used by German Piratenpartei.
  • Metagovernment Tools for collaborative government.
  • Modern Ballots Can create elections using Schultze method. Simple and easy to use.
  • OpaVote Paid service offering several voting methods including STV, IRV, Approval, Condorcet and others. Used by Finnish Pirate party in 2013 for selecting their candidates for European Parliament elections.
  • Social Voting Advice Applications Also includes meta voting if the questions themselves are good or not.
  • Sosiaalinen vaalikone (Finnish) Users can add questions and candidates answer them. Users can also meta-vote on whether questions themselves are good or not.
  • Vote fair Allows creating anonymous ranked votes.

Organizations

  • E2D International The umbrella organization of the electronic direct democracy (E2D) parties around the world.

Under the hood: Made with Django Python Powered Hosted on Linode