My priorities
A priority says what matters most to you and how much, compared with other public issues. It is about importance, not about which solution you prefer.
Sharing rule: group totals can be public
My Vote Forward
My priorities. My opinion. My vote.
A framework for understanding public priorities, choosing what to share, and protecting the private vote.
The demo does not cast official votes.
The three parts
My Vote Forward separates priorities, opinions and votes
My Vote Forward treats a priority, an opinion and a vote as three different things. Each one answers a different question, and each one follows a different rule about who can see it.
My opinion
An opinion is your view on a specific, clearly worded question. You decide whether to share it, with whom, and for which question, one question at a time.
Sharing rule: only by your choice
My vote
A vote is a choice on an official ballot, counted under law. In this framework a vote stays secret. There is no setting that makes a ballot choice public, and no way to share it from the framework.
Sharing rule: always private
Why the difference matters
A shared priority is not a shared answer, and an opinion is not a ballot
People who agree that an issue matters often disagree about what to do about it. If priorities and opinions were blended together, a long list of people who care about an issue could be mistaken for support for one particular plan.
Hypothetical example. Two neighbors both rank housing as their top local priority. One wants the city to allow more apartments. The other wants stricter limits on new building. They share a priority. They do not share an opinion, and they may vote differently on the same measure.
An opinion and a vote are also different acts. Saying what you think is expression, and you can revise it. A ballot is a decision cast in private and counted under election law. My Vote Forward keeps these apart so that sharing an opinion never reveals a vote, and a vote never becomes something to display.
Between elections
Participation in My Vote Forward continues between elections
Most public decisions do not start on election day. A problem gets noticed, people propose responses, some proposals are developed or qualify for a ballot, a decision is made, and then it is carried out or not. My Vote Forward describes how a person can follow that path, state priorities along the way, and understand where a decision is actually made.
That does not mean there is always a measure waiting for a vote, or that any institution must act on what participants say. Many issues never reach a ballot, and different levels of government follow different calendars and rules.
What you can learn here
What My Vote Forward teaches about public decisions
Each topic gets a plain explanation first and graduate-level depth after it, with evidence, competing views and open questions.
Representation
What it means for officials to respond to the public, use their own judgment, and protect people in the minority.
Tradeoffs
Why ranking what matters is different from dividing a budget, and why a popular priority can still be hard to fund.
Consent
How permission to share should work: for a specific purpose, revocable, and recorded, with honest limits on what can be recalled.
Ballot privacy
Why secret ballots were adopted, what they protect against, and what they cannot protect against on their own.
From proposal to decision
The difference between an issue, a proposal and a ballot item, and who has the authority to decide each one.
Measurement
How question wording, who takes part and missing answers change what a result can honestly say.
The difficult questions
The hard questions My Vote Forward takes on directly
A framework for public participation is only as credible as its answers to the ways it could fail. These are treated as open problems, not as solved ones.
- Agenda control. Who chooses the questions, and how is that power checked? Governance
- Intimidation. How can people be pressured by family, employers or anyone else? Intimidation
- Exclusion. Who gets left out, and why participation counts can mislead. Access and exclusion
- Manipulation. Wording, coordinated campaigns and unequal resources. Question design
- Accountability. Who answers for the operator, and how decisions are appealed. Governance
- Security. What a website can protect today, and what an official election would require. Security
- Authority. Which institutions can lawfully decide, and which cannot. Jurisdictions
- Identity. Why signing in to an account does not prove a person is eligible to vote. Identity and registration
Framework, demo and voting
What exists today: the framework, the demo, and what is not offered
| Part | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| The framework | This site. An educational explanation of priorities, opinions and private voting, with sources. | Available |
| The demo | A separate interactive demonstration of how the ideas could work, using simulated data. No official votes are cast there. | Not yet reachable The demo at https://demo.myvoteforward.com/ did not answer when this page was built on October 26, 2026. Links to it point here until it does. |
| Official voting | Real, authorized, secure private voting is part of the framework's long-term ambition. It would require authorization by the responsible election authorities, independent evaluation and legal approval. Neither site offers it. | Not offered |
The library
My Vote Forward chapters you can read now
Every chapter states its reader question and thesis, defines its terms, presents evidence and competing interpretations, and ends with unresolved questions and numbered sources.
Start
My Vote Forward chapters in Start:
- Start hereWhat is My Vote Forward, in five minutes, and what does it not claim to be?
- Hard questions about My Vote ForwardWhat are the strongest objections to this framework, and how does it answer them?
- GlossaryWhat exactly do the key terms in the My Vote Forward framework mean?
Framework
My Vote Forward chapters in Framework:
- The frameworkWhat exactly is the My Vote Forward framework, how do its parts relate, and where does it stop applying?
- PrioritiesWhat can a statement of priorities tell us, and what can it never tell us?
- OpinionsWhat is an opinion worth as civic information, and how can people express one without being pressured for it?
- Private votingWhat would it take for private voting to be part of an ongoing civic framework, and why is the vote treated so differently from everything else?
- ProposalsWhen people say they support "doing something" about an issue, what exactly would they be supporting, and who could actually do it?
- Participation over timeWhat does it mean to participate between elections, and what can people usefully do at each stage of a public decision?
- RepresentationIf many people say what they want, what does a representative owe them, and what must a representative refuse to give them?
- TradeoffsIf something matters a great deal to many people, why can't the money simply follow?
Research
My Vote Forward chapters in Research:
- The secret ballot: how private voting became a public safeguardWhy do modern elections keep the individual vote secret, and what did secrecy actually change?
- Access and exclusion: who was kept from voting, and howHow have voting systems excluded eligible people, and what does that history require of a new framework?
- Participation between elections: referendums, consultation, and participatory budgetingWhat ways of taking part between elections already exist, and how much power did they actually give participants?
- Question designIf people answer a question, how do we know the answers mean what we think they mean?
- MeasurementWhen a site reports what participants think is important, what does that number actually measure, and about whom?
- Collective priorities: how individual rankings become a group picture, and what that picture cannot sayWhen many people rank what matters to them, how do you combine the answers fairly, and what does the combined result actually mean?
- Opinion and choiceIf someone says one thing and votes another way, does that mean they lied?
- EvaluationHow would anyone know whether this framework helps people understand and take part, rather than just assuming it does?
- Comparative cases: what participation systems have achieved and where they fell shortWhat do real participation systems show about strengths, failures and limits?
Trust
My Vote Forward chapters in Trust:
- Privacy: five kinds of data, five sets of rulesWhat information does a civic participation framework handle, and why can't it all be protected the same way?
- Consent: specific, revocable, and never a key to the ballotWhen a person agrees to share something, what exactly have they agreed to, and what can they take back?
- Intimidation, coercion, and vote buyingHow can a participation system keep people from being pressured, bought, or punished for what they think and how they vote?
- Security: three layers that must not be confusedWhat does "secure" mean for a website, for a demo with real accounts, and for an official election, and why are those three different claims?
- Identity, authentication, eligibility, and registrationIf someone can log in securely, does that mean they are allowed to vote?
- Hardware: what devices can and cannot proveWould a secure phone, a security key, or a fingerprint reader make remote voting trustworthy?
- Audits and verification: evidence without exposing the voteHow can the public check that votes were counted correctly without anyone learning how a particular person voted?
- Published releases: scheduled, reviewed, and the same for everyoneHow should collective participation data reach the public without becoming a surveillance tool, a scoreboard, or a leak?
- Governance: who decides, and how they answer for itWho decides what people are asked, and what stops that power from being misused?
- Jurisdictions: many laws, layered districts, no universal approvalCould one participation or voting system be approved once and used anywhere?
Learn
My Vote Forward chapters in Learn:
- LearnWhere should I start reading, given why I am here?
- Seminar guideHow can a class or reading group use this framework to argue about priorities, opinions, and the private vote?
About
My Vote Forward chapters in About:
Who is behind it
Who writes and publishes My Vote Forward, and how
My Vote Forward is written by Mike Millett and published as an educational initiative. It is not a campaign, a party, a polling company or an election authority, and it does not rate or endorse candidates.
My Vote Forward is not a data business. It does not sell data, accept payment to rank issues, sponsor candidates or target campaigns. There are no comments, discussion boards or follower feeds on this site, because the framework is meant to support conversations that happen elsewhere.
Each chapter shows its version and the date of its last substantive review. Material claims cite the source at the point where they are made, and sources that cannot be checked are not used. See every source · Read the changelog · Report a correction