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Working definition. My Vote Forward is an educational framework for ongoing civic participation that connects shared priorities, optional public expression, and secure private voting.

That sentence is a working definition. The wording may change as the framework is tested. The idea underneath it is simple, and it fits in one line:

My priorities. My opinion. My vote.

Those are three different things. People often treat them as one. This site explains why they should be kept apart, what each one can and cannot tell us, and what would have to be true before any of it could be used in a real election.

What this is, and what it is not

My Vote Forward is a framework for learning and teaching. It is not an election service. These websites do not run official votes, do not issue ballots, and do not register voters. The demo shows how the ideas might look on a screen, using simulated data. Nothing you do in the demo is an official vote.

My Vote Forward did not invent any of the parts it uses. Secret ballots, public consultation, ballot measures, participatory budgeting, and opinion research all existed long before this site. The history chapters credit that earlier work. What the framework adds is a way of fitting these parts together and a set of rules about what may be shared.

The three parts in plain words

1. Priorities: what matters most. A priority is a judgment about importance. "Housing matters more to me than parks right now." Priorities can be added up across many people and shown in public as a group result, because they say what deserves attention, not what should be done about it. Read Priorities.

2. Opinions: what I think about a specific proposal. An opinion is a view on a worded question. "I support this specific bus fare change." Opinions are private by default. You may choose to share a particular opinion, on purpose, one at a time. You may also change your mind. Read Opinions.

3. The vote: the official decision. A vote is cast on an official ballot run by a legally responsible authority. It is secret, and in this framework that secrecy cannot be switched off. There is no share button for a ballot and no public vote history. Read Private voting.

The secrecy of the vote is not a new idea. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, says elections "shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures" ¹. Australian colonies moved from public voting to the secret ballot in the 1850s; the Australian Electoral Commission notes that public voting "left them vulnerable to intimidation and coercion" ².

Three quick examples

Hypothetical example: same priority, different opinions. Two neighbors both rank housing as their top priority. One wants more apartment construction near transit. The other wants limits on new construction to protect the character of the street. A priority count would show them as agreeing. They do not agree on any policy. This is why the framework never reads a priority as support for a proposal.

Hypothetical example: an opinion is not a ballot. A resident tells a survey she leans toward a school bond. On election day, after reading the official ballot guide, she votes no. Nothing dishonest happened. She learned more, or weighed the cost differently. The framework treats an opinion and a ballot as separate acts and never tries to link one to the other for a named person. See Opinion and choice.

Hypothetical example: between elections. A city is considering a library expansion that has not reached any ballot. Residents can still say how important libraries are compared with other subjects, and can give an opinion on the draft plan. If the plan later becomes a ballot measure, the vote happens through the official election, not through this site. See Participation over time.

Why keep them apart

Each part answers a different question, and each carries a different risk.

• A priority answers "what should get attention?" Its risk is that whoever writes the list of subjects shapes the answers. See Who chooses the subjects?
• An opinion answers "what do I think of this exact wording?" Its risk is pressure: people can be judged, punished, or bought for what they say. That is why sharing is voluntary and specific. See Intimidation.
• A vote answers "what is decided?" Its risk is coercion and fraud. That is why it is secret and why its security is treated as a requirement, not a feature. See Security.

Mixing them causes real errors. How a question is worded can move answers by large amounts. In a January 2003 Pew Research Center survey, 68% favored military action in Iraq when asked one way; when the question added that U.S. forces "might suffer thousands of casualties," 43% favored it ³. If a single number can swing that much from wording alone, then treating a survey answer as if it were a vote would be a mistake.

Defined terms

• Priority: a judgment of relative importance among subjects.
• Opinion: a view on a specific, worded question or proposal.
• Vote: a choice recorded on an official ballot, in an election run by a legally responsible authority.
• Published release: a scheduled, approved package of group results with its methods. See Published releases.

Full definitions are in the glossary.

Evidence

This page is an orientation, so it cites only a few anchors. The secrecy of the vote is set out in international human rights texts ¹. The move from public to secret voting is documented history ². The size of wording effects in surveys is documented by survey researchers ³. The chapters linked below carry the full evidence for each part.

Competing interpretations

Some readers will see the three parts as one continuous act of citizenship and worry that separating them weakens public debate. Others will think even published group priorities invite manipulation. Both concerns are taken seriously in Representation, Collective priorities, and the objection index.

Application to this framework

The rules that follow from the three parts are short:

1. Group priorities can be public.
2. Individual opinions are private unless the person chooses to share a specific one.
3. A ballot is always secret. Its privacy cannot be switched off.
4. No raw participant data is sold or streamed. Group results go out only as published releases.
5. The websites are educational. The demo uses simulated data. Official voting would need legal authority, independent review, and approvals that do not exist today.

Unresolved questions

The framework does not yet answer, and does not pretend to answer:

• Who should choose the list of subjects people rank, and how that choice is reviewed. See Governance.
• How to keep organized or wealthy groups from dominating group priorities.
• Whether secure remote voting can ever protect against pressure at home. See Intimidation.
• How any of this would fit the very different election laws of different places. See Jurisdictions.

Where to go next

• For the whole framework: The framework, then Priorities, Opinions, Private voting, Proposals, Participation over time, Representation, and Tradeoffs.
• For history: The secret ballot, Access and exclusion, Participation between elections.
• For research methods: Question design and Measurement.
• For trust and safety: Privacy, Consent, Security.
• For teaching: Reading paths and Seminar questions.
• For hard objections: Questions.