We believe that anonymity is critical to ensure that voters voice their true opinions. During the voting process GroupAgree ensures that all votes are kept anonymous, except to the survey creator who needs to be able to delete any accidental or malicious votes.

Sometimes it’s helpful for everyone to be able to see how others voted after the survey is closed and results are calculated, particularly when trying to schedule a meeting. GroupAgree gives the option to the survey creator to show de-anonymized voter names on the detailed results page to everyone (i.e. after the survey has been closed and results are calculated), in which case you’ll be notified before voting. This can be useful so anyone can see who wouldn't be able to make a certain meeting time.

The default setting, however, is for all votes to remain anonymous after closing the survey.

Yes. Please use your real name when voting, or at least a name that the survey creator will recognize! If you use something like “anonymous”, don’t be surprised if the survey creator ends up throwing your vote out since they can’t tell if it’s legitimate or someone trying to unscrupulously cast extra votes.

This isn't a good idea since it's only counted as one vote. Even if you have the same preferences as someone else, please make sure they cast their own vote. If they're unable to vote or ask you to vote for them, go ahead and submit an additional vote using their name.

No. For example, if there were only a few choices to vote on but lots of columns, it wouldn't matter if you dragged your first choice all the way over to the right or just a single column to the right of your second choice. All that matters is if a choice is ranked above another choice. As a result, leaving columns empty is totally fine.

If you rank multiple choices in the same column, GroupAgree assumes that you prefer them all equally. Leaving choices tied with one another is no problem.

If you were logged in when you voted, simply go back to the survey and vote again; GroupAgree will automatically update your previous vote. If you submitted your vote without being logged in, you get one last chance to link it to your account by signing up or logging in before you leave the page. If you already left the survey after submitting an anonymous vote, the only way to change it is to tell the survey creator to delete your old vote so you can submit a new one. It's best to make sure that you're logged in whenever you vote!

When creating a survey you can choose an option to “allow voters to veto choices”, which is perfect for scheduling purposes. The benefit of allowing voters to veto choices (by dragging them to the “not possible” column) is that it gives them a way to say “there's no way I can make it” instead of “I really prefer we don't meet at this time”. Here's an example of this type of survey:

Veto example survey »

Veto example survey results »

The results allow you to easily see how many people can't make certain dates. The best part is that voters can still rank their preferences for non-vetoed choices as with any other GroupAgree survey, making it one of the most powerful scheduling apps available.

Currently you need discuss this and get it settled with any potential participants before creating the survey. In the future we have plans to give survey creators the option to have a pre-survey round where people can suggest choices directly through GroupAgree. Please let us know if you think this would be useful.

Yes. In the future GroupAgree will offer different membership tiers that will allow increasing numbers of choices and participants. However, while the app is undergoing testing, the number of choices you can add to your surveys is limited. You can get around this easily by contacting GroupAgree customer support and requesting a custom-designed survey. Just go to your survey management page and send feedback with your survey requirements, and we'll make it happen quickly.

Absolutely. Just get in touch via the feedback form at the bottom of the page and share your specifications with us.

Yes, provided that no votes have been submitted. We don't believe that it's fair for a survey creator to count votes that were cast before changes were made to a survey, as voters may have voted differently in light of them. If you absolutely need to modify your survey you can delete all votes that have been cast so far, make your changes, and then tell everyone to submit their votes again. Alternatively, you can contact GroupAgree customer support using the feedback form at the bottom of the page and we can help you out.

To see the results of a survey you need to close it first. Go to management page for your survey (you should have received a link to this page in your e-mail when you created the survey), then click the “close survey and calculate results” button. Once the calculations are done, you simply need to go back to the same link that you used to vote in the survey and it will now show you the results. Your voters can also see the results by following the same link.

Yes, you can, but it’s best not to make any decisions until you get all the votes in! To do this, close the survey and check the results as described above, then re-open the survey by going back to the survey management page and clicking the “re-open survey” button.

Keep in mind that, while the survey is closed, any potential voters who visit it will see a message saying that the survey was closed and they’re no longer able to vote, so make sure you re-open it as soon as possible if you’re still expecting votes to come in.

If, after tabulating everyone’s votes, there’s still a tie between choices, a number of different factors are considered as tiebreakers. We can’t elaborate on exactly how this works (since it’s part of what makes the GroupAgree algorithm so unique), but you can trust that the decision is made logically and impartially.

In the rare case that there’s still a tie after considering all these tiebreakers, a random number is used to break it. GroupAgree's goal is to help you arrive at a final decision and if it comes down to a coin flip, so be it.

GroupAgree uses a specially-modified version of the ranked pairs algorithm, developed by our in-house mathematicians. While Arrow's impossibility theorem guarantees that there's no such thing as a perfect voting system, we believe that ours is just about as close as you can get. GroupAgree satisfies what is known as the Condorcet criterion which means that, if at all possible, the winning choice is preferred by more voters when compared to every single other choice–surprisingly not the case with most popular voting methods!

GroupAgree is designed such that each voter can voice their true preferences without fear. Unlike with the standard plurality voting system, you're never penalized for voting for a less-popular option: there's no such thing as “throwing your vote away” or being forced to “choose the lesser evil” if you're convinced that your true preference has no chance of winning. It's also highly-resistant to tactical voting (i.e. “gaming the system”), which puts it ahead of weighted voting systems. Our algorithm is the core of what makes GroupAgree so special and why we say it's “true democracy in action”. We dream of a world where local and national political elections are decided by GroupAgree!