Are poll votes anonymous?

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I’m curious about how the Corona Virus and it’s associated disease, Covid-19 is impacting the people in this community. And I thought to put out a poll. But then the question occurred to me: are the individual votes anonymous?

So before I do the REAL poll, I’m doing this TEST poll (If I can remember how!) Standby …

Do you think poll voters - including their votes - can be determined by others on the forum?

  • I don’t think poll votes can be paired with voters
  • I think poll votes can be paired with voters
  • I’ve got no clue, but I’m voting to help with the experiment!

0 voters

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There are three levels to the answer:

  • Can everyone see the identifying info? Based on looking at the “show results” chart, I’d say no. No info presented and I can’t see any way to get at it.
  • Can the creator of the poll see the identifying info? Only you will be able to answer that.
  • Is identifying info even captured by the discourse poll system? No clue how to find out.
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Having created a number of polls myself, I know that it (the system) can …

… because the poll creator has the option to show who voted and how.

(Ie, the voters’ avatars are displayed above the result bar graph for each choice in the poll results.)

But in the test poll above, Steven did not check the box to “Show who voted”, viz:

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The “Results” dropdown indicates that the results cannot be kept secret. The results must be shown at sometime, either all time (even prior to a reader voting,) after a vote is cast, or after the system closes the poll.

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Thanks to @DanRathbun and @slbaumgartner, I’m now convinced I can run the poll I REALLY want to run while protecting the anonymity of the voters - including from myself.

Consequently, I’ve closed the poll in this thread, and will do my REAL poll sometime later today.

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