This page states the development status of My Vote Forward plainly, so that nobody has to infer the difference between an educational framework, a demonstration and an election service. Parts of it are regenerated every time the site is built; it was last built on October 26, 2026.

My Vote Forward status in one paragraph

My Vote Forward is an educational framework published on this website. The website explains ideas and cites sources. It does not conduct official votes, collect ballots, register voters or publish anyone's opinions. A separate demo shows how the ideas could work, using simulated data. Real, authorized, secure private voting is part of the framework's long-term ambition and is not offered anywhere today.

Status of each part of My Vote Forward

PartStatus
Educational site (myvoteforward.org)Published 171 chapter(s) published as of October 26, 2026. Chapters are added as they pass review; navigation lists only pages that exist.
Demo (demo.myvoteforward.com)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. The demo is a demonstration only. It uses simulated election state and does not cast official votes.
Official votingNot offered No official vote can be cast on either site. Offering one would require authorization by the responsible election authorities, independent evaluation, and legal approval in each jurisdiction. None of these exist.
Published releases of participant dataNone No participant data has been released. The release policy is described in the framework; any future demonstration package uses only labeled synthetic data.
Accounts on this siteNone This site has no sign-in and does not need one to read anything.
Contact and corrections formWorking Submissions are stored for 90 days and are not emailed anywhere. See the privacy policy.
Images, video and diagramsLimited Homepage photography only. Explanatory diagrams and videos are not part of this phase; every concept is explained in text.

What My Vote Forward has not verified yet

My Vote Forward has not yet verified its legal entity, trademark clearance, final logo or any outside expert review, and it states each of these gaps below rather than assume them away.

  • Legal entity. The legal publisher and entity status of My Vote Forward have not been confirmed. The site makes no claim of nonprofit or charitable status, and the .org domain is not evidence of either.
  • Name and trademark. The name is chosen. Trademark clearance has not been completed.
  • Logo. The logo shown is a placeholder. A final mark has not been approved.
  • Social accounts. The accounts linked in the footer are the project's shared accounts; their content is managed separately from this site.
  • Expert review. Chapters are researched against cited sources, but no outside expert has reviewed them. Where expertise is missing, chapters say so rather than claim a sign-off.
  • Funding. No outside funding, sponsorship or donations are accepted through this site.

Three separate layers of security at My Vote Forward

Security claims about a voting framework are easy to blur, so this site keeps three layers apart. The first is the security of this website: publishing, administration, forms and deployment. The second is the security of the demo: the protection of demo accounts and preferences, with simulated election state. The third is the security an official election would require: authorization, qualification, independent evaluation, secrecy, auditability, accessibility and continuity. The third layer is a research and requirements program, not a feature that can be switched on.

Read more in Security.

Chapter versions and review dates

ChapterVersionLast reviewed
Start here1.0October 26, 2026
Hard questions about My Vote Forward1.0October 26, 2026
Glossary1.0October 26, 2026
The framework1.0October 26, 2026
Priorities1.0October 26, 2026
Opinions1.0October 26, 2026
Private voting1.0October 26, 2026
Proposals1.0October 26, 2026
Participation over time1.0October 26, 2026
Representation1.0October 26, 2026
Tradeoffs1.0October 26, 2026
The secret ballot: how private voting became a public safeguard1.0October 26, 2026
Access and exclusion: who was kept from voting, and how1.0October 26, 2026
Participation between elections: referendums, consultation, and participatory budgeting1.0October 26, 2026
Question design1.0October 26, 2026
Measurement1.0October 26, 2026
Collective priorities: how individual rankings become a group picture, and what that picture cannot say1.0October 26, 2026
Opinion and choice1.0October 26, 2026
Evaluation1.0October 26, 2026
Comparative cases: what participation systems have achieved and where they fell short1.0October 26, 2026
Privacy: five kinds of data, five sets of rules1.0October 26, 2026
Consent: specific, revocable, and never a key to the ballot1.0October 26, 2026
Intimidation, coercion, and vote buying1.0October 26, 2026
Security: three layers that must not be confused1.0October 26, 2026
Identity, authentication, eligibility, and registration1.0October 26, 2026
Hardware: what devices can and cannot prove1.0October 26, 2026
Audits and verification: evidence without exposing the vote1.0October 26, 2026
Published releases: scheduled, reviewed, and the same for everyone1.0October 26, 2026
Governance: who decides, and how they answer for it1.0October 26, 2026
Jurisdictions: many laws, layered districts, no universal approval1.0October 26, 2026
Learn1.0October 26, 2026
Seminar guide1.0October 26, 2026
About My Vote Forward1.0October 26, 2026
Cases: what real participation systems achieved, and where they failed1.0October 26, 2026
The 2016 United Kingdom EU membership referendum1.0October 26, 2026
British Columbia's Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (2003 to 2009)1.0October 26, 2026
Colorado's risk-limiting audits: statistical evidence from paper ballots1.0October 26, 2026
Estonia's internet voting: twenty years of binding i-votes, re-voting and the security debate1.0October 26, 2026
France's Citizens' Convention for Climate (2019 to 2021)1.0October 26, 2026
Georgia's 2020 hand count audit: a full manual tally of about five million ballots1.0October 26, 2026
Iceland's crowdsourced constitution: an open drafting process that stalled in parliament1.0October 26, 2026
Ireland's citizens' assemblies: randomly selected citizens before national votes1.0October 26, 2026
Decide Madrid: citizen proposals, a city vote and a short-lived sortition body1.0October 26, 2026
New York City participatory budgeting: council districts, The People's Money and what the evidence shows1.0October 26, 2026
Norway's internet voting trials: 2011 and 20131.0October 26, 2026
Oregon vote by mail: the first all-mail state and what it measured1.0October 26, 2026
Ostbelgien's permanent citizens' dialogue (2019 to present)1.0October 26, 2026
Paris participatory budget: a decade of resident-chosen investment and its open questions1.0October 26, 2026
Porto Alegre participatory budgeting: the original model, its peak and its long decline1.0October 26, 2026
Better Reykjavik and My Neighborhood: a city's standing channel for resident ideas1.0October 26, 2026
The 2014 Scottish independence referendum1.0October 26, 2026
Switzerland's direct democracy: initiatives, referendums, the double majority and the Landsgemeinde1.0October 26, 2026
Switzerland's e-voting trials: suspension, redesign, and the 2026 Basel-Stadt incident1.0October 26, 2026
vTaiwan: how a civic tech community built an open consultation process for national rules1.0October 26, 2026
Washington, D.C. 2010 internet voting test: a public trial that was breached1.0October 26, 2026
West Virginia's mobile voting pilot: Voatz in 2018 and the security reviews that followed1.0October 26, 2026
Agenda-setting: shaping which issues get attention1.0October 26, 2026
Aggregate: a summary that does not show any individual's answer1.0October 26, 2026
Apportionment: dividing House seats among the states1.0October 26, 2026
Audit: an independent check of whether a process produced a correct result1.0October 26, 2026
Authentication: proving control of an account1.0October 26, 2026
Ballot item: a proposal or contest that has qualified for the ballot1.0October 26, 2026
Ballot measure: a question that appears on an official ballot1.0October 26, 2026
Ballot: the official instrument of a vote1.0October 26, 2026
Chain of custody: a documented record of who held what, and when1.0October 26, 2026
Citizens' assembly: a randomly selected body that deliberates and recommends1.0October 26, 2026
Coercion: pressure to vote or speak a certain way1.0October 26, 2026
Consent: agreement to a specific use of information1.0October 26, 2026
Deliberation: reasoned discussion before a decision1.0October 26, 2026
Deliberative poll: a random sample surveyed before and after deliberating1.0October 26, 2026
Differential privacy: a mathematical limit on what a release reveals1.0October 26, 2026
Effectiveness assessment: does a program achieve its goal?1.0October 26, 2026
Eligibility: meeting the legal requirements to vote1.0October 26, 2026
End-to-end verifiable voting: cryptographic evidence without revealing votes1.0October 26, 2026
Identity proofing: tying an account to a real person1.0October 26, 2026
Identity: the attributes that describe a particular person1.0October 26, 2026
Initiative: citizens propose a law and put it to a vote1.0October 26, 2026
Jurisdiction: a government unit with authority over an area and subject1.0October 26, 2026
k-anonymity: hiding each record among at least k1.0October 26, 2026
Nonresponse bias: when those who answer differ from those who do not1.0October 26, 2026
Opinion: a stated view on a worded question1.0October 26, 2026
Opt-in sample: people who chose to take part1.0October 26, 2026
Participation: taking part in a civic process1.0October 26, 2026
Participatory budgeting: residents decide part of a public budget1.0October 26, 2026
Passkey: a phishing-resistant sign-in credential1.0October 26, 2026
Priority: a judgment of what deserves attention first1.0October 26, 2026
Proposal: a specific plan for public action1.0October 26, 2026
Published release: a scheduled, versioned package of aggregate results1.0October 26, 2026
Ranking: an ordering from most to least important1.0October 26, 2026
Recall: removing an official before the term ends1.0October 26, 2026
Referendum: a question put directly to voters1.0October 26, 2026
Registration: entering an eligible person on the voter roll1.0October 26, 2026
Representation: acting on behalf of others1.0October 26, 2026
Resource allocation: dividing a fixed amount across items1.0October 26, 2026
Risk-limiting audit: statistical evidence that the winner is right1.0October 26, 2026
Salience: how prominent an issue is in attention1.0October 26, 2026
Secrecy: no one can link a voter to a ballot1.0October 26, 2026
Sortition: selecting public decision-makers by lot1.0October 26, 2026
Special district: a local government for a specific purpose1.0October 26, 2026
Synthetic data: artificial records made to resemble real data1.0October 26, 2026
Threat model: a structured account of what could go wrong1.0October 26, 2026
Verification: checking that something is what it claims to be1.0October 26, 2026
Voter-verified paper record: the paper a voter can check before casting1.0October 26, 2026
Weighting: adjusting a sample to match a population1.0October 26, 2026
Problems1.0October 26, 2026
Agenda capture1.0October 26, 2026
Ballot access: the practical steps between being eligible and casting a vote that counts1.0October 26, 2026
Disability access: voting privately and independently with a disability1.0October 26, 2026
Election administration funding: paying for the machinery of voting1.0October 26, 2026
Foreign interference: outside governments trying to shape another country's vote1.0October 26, 2026
Gerrymandering1.0October 26, 2026
Gridlock and legislative deadlock1.0October 26, 2026
The collapse of local news1.0October 26, 2026
Low turnout in local elections: when a small and unrepresentative electorate decides1.0October 26, 2026
Misinformation1.0October 26, 2026
Money in politics1.0October 26, 2026
Polarization: when disagreement turns into distrust of the other side1.0October 26, 2026
Primary elections and the few who decide1.0October 26, 2026
Referendum failures: when asking everyone produces an answer nobody can use1.0October 26, 2026
The representation gap1.0October 26, 2026
Trust in elections: why confidence and accuracy are different problems1.0October 26, 2026
Tyranny of the majority: when the larger number decides what the smaller number may do1.0October 26, 2026
Unequal participation: who votes, who does not, and whether it changes what government does1.0October 26, 2026
Voter intimidation: pressure on voters and on the people who run elections1.0October 26, 2026
Youth participation: why the youngest eligible voters vote least, and what changes it1.0October 26, 2026
Can someone in a household coerce a remote voter?1.0October 26, 2026
Can an institution lawfully ignore a public result?1.0October 26, 2026
Can someone be punished for an opinion they share?1.0October 26, 2026
Can wealthy or organized groups dominate a priority-setting system?1.0October 26, 2026
Does a fingerprint or face scan prove someone is eligible to vote?1.0October 26, 2026
Does a majority decide anyone's rights in this framework?1.0October 26, 2026
Is My Vote Forward an official voting service?1.0October 26, 2026
Is My Vote Forward just a poll with extra steps?1.0October 26, 2026
What happens when the network or the system fails?1.0October 26, 2026
What if most people never participate?1.0October 26, 2026
What happens when someone changes their position?1.0October 26, 2026
Who can see my data in My Vote Forward?1.0October 26, 2026
Who chooses the ten subjects, and why should anyone accept that list?1.0October 26, 2026
Who funds My Vote Forward, and could money shape it?1.0October 26, 2026
Why should anyone trust the operator of this framework?1.0October 26, 2026
Subjects: ten provisional areas of public life1.0October 26, 2026
Defense and foreign affairs1.0October 26, 2026
Defense and foreign affairs, the evidence1.0October 26, 2026
Who decides defense and foreign affairs1.0October 26, 2026
Economy and Work1.0October 26, 2026
Economy and Work: evidence1.0October 26, 2026
Economy and Work: who decides1.0October 26, 2026
Education1.0October 26, 2026
Education: evidence1.0October 26, 2026
Education: who decides1.0October 26, 2026
Environment and energy1.0October 26, 2026
Environment and energy: what the evidence shows1.0October 26, 2026
Environment and energy: who decides1.0October 26, 2026
Government and rights1.0October 26, 2026
Government and rights, the evidence1.0October 26, 2026
Who decides government and rights1.0October 26, 2026
Health and Care: what the public prioritizes and why it is hard to measure1.0October 26, 2026
Health and Care: what the evidence shows1.0October 26, 2026
Health and Care: who decides1.0October 26, 2026
Housing and Communities: what the public prioritizes and why it is hard to measure1.0October 26, 2026
Housing and Communities: what the evidence shows1.0October 26, 2026
Housing and Communities: who decides1.0October 26, 2026
Immigration and Citizenship: what the public prioritizes and why it is hard to measure1.0October 26, 2026
Immigration and Citizenship: what the evidence shows1.0October 26, 2026
Immigration and Citizenship: who decides1.0October 26, 2026
Infrastructure and Transport: what the public prioritizes and why it is hard to measure1.0October 26, 2026
Infrastructure and Transport: what the evidence shows1.0October 26, 2026
Infrastructure and Transport: who decides1.0October 26, 2026
Safety and Justice: what the public prioritizes and why it is hard to measure1.0October 26, 2026
Safety and Justice: what the evidence shows1.0October 26, 2026
Safety and Justice: who decides1.0October 26, 2026