Discover the Art and Craft of AmericaThinks
Explaining Values, Vision, Methods, and Goals.
AmericaThinks: A New New Thing
What is special about AmericaThinks? How can it be any different than the hundreds of other public opinion polling solutions that exist today?
AmericaThinks is a new, new thing - it is election-grade polling that is free to all American voters. Our mission is to help every American voter be seen for who they are and heard for what they believe - especially the marginalized and overlooked voters.
AmericaThinks is a messenger for American voters between elections. We believe that a vast common ground of values exists among America voters. By discovering that common ground, we believe that Americans can build a better future - together.
After you have seen this introduction, discover more about AmericaThinks by exploring our core values, open principles, non-partisan approach, and base technologies.
welcome
The Pulse of Democracy.
George Gallup published a work in 1940 entitled, “The Pulse of Democracy.” In his book, he discussed pioneering methods of sample-based polling and extolled the virtues of knowing the will of the people.
The practice of modern sample-based polling was developed in the early part of the 20th century when it was economically and practically infeasible to gather the opinion of large numbers of people. Opinion polls were gathered by individually interviewing about 1000 people and were primarily used to predict election results. Using election results as a point of reference, opinion polling methodologies were refined in the hope that a survey of a small number of people could accurately predict elections as well as nationwide opinions.
Since the time of the Federalist Papers, a debate has raged as to whether a representative should be a delegate or a trustee of the people that elected them to office. A delegate votes the exact will of the people at every turn, whereas a trustee votes based their own experience and judgement.
Without practical and reliable opinion polling, a representative tends to have no option but to act as a delegate serving special interests or act as a trustee that independently votes their viewpoint.
Therefore, one of the most valuable gifts of reliable public opinion polling is the gift of a revived representative democracy. With reliable and real-time opinion polls, a representative can know the exact will of their constituents and thereby can make a choice to act as a delegate or a trustee.
Thought leaders such as George Gallup were adamant that involving every citizen in the political process is the bedrock of democracy. Writing in 1948, Gallup listed ten contributions of polling to the democratic process. Summarizing these contributions provides a helpful insight to the enormous benefits of polling. Public opinion polls:
provide political leaders with a more accurate gauge of public opinion,
speed up the process of democracy due to swift reports of public opinion,
show that political wisdom is common to all people,
focus attention on major issues of the day,
promote a well-informed public,
help governmental leaders make better decisions,
make it more difficult for the powerful few to pick presidential candidates,
show that people are not motivated to vote based solely on their self-interest,
resist the power of special-interest groups, and
help clarify the mandate given to winners of elections.
What has gone wrong with Polling?
Over the years, the accuracy of sample-based opinion polls has varied greatly. Sample-based polling methodologies can be useful but their reliance on “normalization” of surveyed populations based on geography and other characteristics can lead to inexact results. Sample-based polling tends to gloss over differences in sub-populations as well. Further, these methodologies do not facilitate truly anonymous expression of opinion, do not have safeguards to ensure accurate results, and/or are subject to misuse.
One glaring shortcoming of sample-based polling is that it nationalizes public opinion. America’s representative democracy has intended that elected officials actually represent voters in their district. Sample-based polling does not take into account differences of opinions in 435 congressional districts, but instead has the goal of averaging out the opinions across the entire country. Over the years, this has had the devasting effect of encouraging a representative to ignore constituent opinions in favor of national opinions.
Another glaring shortcoming of sample-based polling is its reliance on statistical normalization of polls. When selecting a sample group to poll, samples are almost always an imperfect reflection of the assumed ideal. Pollsters attempt to “correct” collected results based on sample comparisons with elections, census, and other data that are assumed to be correct. This can lead to gross inaccuracies in polling results.
In a telling moment in 1987, Bud Lewis, the Director of Polling for the Los Angeles Times said, “if there is difference between [a larger poll sample and a smaller poll sample], then you have to go and consult with your bellybutton and try to decide which would be the best figure to [publish] … there is an awful lot of judgement involved in these things…”
And the pollster’s job is getting harder. In 2020, David Hill wrote in the Washington Post, “There’s a dirty little secret that we pollsters need to own up to: People don’t talk to us anymore, and it’s making polling less reliable.” In the early 1980s, one in five people contacted would complete a polling interview. By 2020, as many as 100 voters would have to be contacted to complete a single interview. Hill said, “And here’s the killer detail: That single cooperative soul who speaks with an interviewer cannot possibly hold the same opinions as the 99 other voters who refused. In short, we no longer have truly random samples that support claims that poll results accurately represent opinions of the electorate.”
Hill goes on to say that most pollsters use weighting factors to put a statistical Band-Aid on polling results and claim a low margin of error. However, the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections exposed even deeper problems.
In the 2020 presidential election in Florida, 136,688 voters were called in order to complete 1,510 interviews. Instead of random sampling, polls are effectively comprised of “convenience samples” of the few that consent to give their time and opinions. David Hill concluded, “Despite knowledge of this, pollsters (including myself) have glossed over this reality by dressing up our results with claims of polls having a ‘margin of error’ of three or four percentage points when we knew, or should have known, that the error factor is incalculable given the non-random sample.”
Hill also addressed online polling in 2020. “But most online polling uses non-random samples from pre-recruited ‘panels’ of voters who have signed up to be interviewed, typically for some incentive. And online surveys have serious data quality or integrity issues. Most voters rush through them too rapidly for real thought. And we cannot verify that online voters are indeed registered to vote or have the requisite vote history they may claim.”
Other poll analysts have concluded that people that consent to be interviewed are increasingly less candid with pollsters. The reason for a lack of candor may be an implied social pressure to answer a question “correctly” or a fear that their opinions will be disclosed. The result is that people seem to be taking a politically correct public stance on a matter while acting or voting very differently. This fear has its roots in the reality that conversations with pollsters are not anonymous. The fear of losing face, friends, or even a job is much more powerful than the need to be transparent with a stranger about a deeply personal belief.
Technology, culture, and personal norms have worked to erode the usefulness of sample-based polling.
Is there a way to reclaim to wisdom of the American voter?
The American Association for Public Opinion Research published finding regarding polling in the 2020 election to “help quantify the nature of the polling error and suggest what may have happened.” David Byler commented on this report, “Instead, polls should serve as a rough guide to public opinion. …We should be cognizant of polling’s problems and shortcomings — at least until someone comes up with a better way to discover what Americans think.”
Election-Grade Polling.
Election-grade public opinion polling addresses many of the shortcomings of sample-based polling and will completely change how we express and understand each other’s opinions.
Imagine if we could conduct a public opinion poll much like we conduct an election.
What if …
All participants were authenticated to be currently registered voters.
All opinions were complete anonymous.
All results could be audited for accuracy.
Every voter in every district could participate for free.
This is AmericaThinks.
AmericaThinks envisions 10s of millions of registered voters expressing their anonymous opinions on important issues of the day.
AmericaThinks is on smartphones so that anytime, anywhere, participants can conveniently weigh in with their opinions. Polls can be conceived, approved, published, and tallying results within minutes.
Election-grade polling means that AmericaThinks poll results can be trusted. It means that only qualified people can participate and they can participate only once per poll. The results cannot be stuffed with bots or malicious actors. It means that participants will free to express their genuine opinions because their opinions are truly anonymous. Opinions are not recorded on their smartphone and the participant’s identity is removed from responses before they leave the smartphone. No one - not even AmericaThinks - can know a participant’s opinion.
Even better than current elections, poll data can be audited, published, and even audited by third parties without breaking the anonymity of the responses.
We believe that an election-grade opinion polls will overcome many, if not most problems associated with modern day sample-based polls.
Our Mission
to help every American voter be seen for who they are and heard for what they believe
Our Mission.
AmericaThinks has been organized to provide non-partisan, unbiased research on cultural and governmental issues throughout the United States. More specifically, software applications will be used to conduct voter research on various issues. In doing so, AmericaThinks will ensure registered voters in the United States are informed and engaged in culture and governance, thus promoting the democratic process. AmericaThinks desires to give voice to every American voter, especially to marginalized and overlooked voters.
AmericaThinks will serve the approximately 170 million registered voters in all congressional districts, states, and territories. All polling results are published in substantially real-time. AmericaThinks applications are provided free of charge to all participants. Polling results are publicly available on the application and the AmericaThinks website.
The goal of AmericaThinks is to stimulate conversations about critical issues concerning governance and culture. Using election-grade polling, AmericaThinks seeks to allow voters in a congressional district to provide real-time public feedback on matters of culture, policy, and governance. This will allow voters to express their opinions between elections, thus giving the representative a reliable source of constituency sentiment as decisions are reached.
Further, at the next formal election, it will provide information that allows voters to choose if their representative should act as a delegate or trustee representative. AmericaThinks will inform cultural issues in a similar way. Public sentiment within communities can be understood in a granular fashion as to promote understanding and empathy.
Common Ground.
Americans seem to be increasingly fractured over the way we should frame our culture and live our lives. More than ever before, we need to listen to each other. A better America starts with a true understanding of our values and dreams. What are the common ties that bind us together as Americans?
The capacity to disagree and still live together was baked into the American pie. Nowhere in the history of human civilization has the governed had so much say in how the government works. The American government was built to solve our disagreements in our town halls and legislatures. We argue in the halls of Congress - we don’t stir revolution in the streets.
Our representative democracy system of government is built to change and grow as informed by the will of the majority of people. Equally important is the responsibility of that majority to protect the rights of the minority of people. Discourse and discussion are intended to influence our representatives as they decide policy and create laws. This system of self-government, imperfect that it may be, is designed to be self-correcting. This amazing system of self-government cannot hope to function nor be long sustained without a clear understanding of each other.
Maybe the most noble task of AmericaThinks is to help Americans find shared common ground in their goals, values, and priorities. Our dream is to reflect the opinions of all American voters by giving all voters a voice, with broad and diverse participation on every important topic of the day. By sharing our opinions, we can reconnect with our neighbors and community and begin to live the promise of building even a better hope for the future.
Why is AmericaThinks Important for Today?
When the United States was established, a representative democratic process was implemented to allow citizens to actively participate in the decision making of the government through their representative. Representatives were informed of the will of the constituents and constituents were informed of the will of the representatives through local debates, town hall meetings, and newspapers.
Since that time, the population of the United States has grown exponentially larger and each representative now has an overwhelming number of constituents. Traditional sample-based polling and social media have nationalized opinions and further separated representatives and their constituents. We are in dire need of a tool that will re-connect representatives and their constituents.
Core Values.
Authentic
A reliable poll must be based on accurate and reliable data. This is why all our participants are authenticated as real people and a currently registered voter. Our polls and surveys will not be compromised by unverified users, bad actors, or programmable bots. Our goal is to consistently survey American voters to obtain the most inclusive, authentic, and complete picture of America.
Accountable
We want AmericaThinks to be completely transparent and understandable. Unlike any other polling organization, we audit polling data, publish the audited results, and welcome third-party audits.
Non-Partisan
We recognize and believe firmly that a key to being trustworthy is a dedication to fairness and impartiality. AmericaThinks is non-partisan and will continue to be so. Reporting live results and sourcing questions from publicly available statements are just a couple of ways we prove our commitment to transparency and non-partisanship. There is no filter or algorithm that will block or promote certain answers, results, or questions.
Anonymous
It is only natural to be reserved and careful about sharing your opinions. AmericaThinks is purpose-built to protect your identity by mathematically hiding the connection between you and your answer. Before an answer leaves your phone, your identity is removed from that answer. No one, not even AmericaThinks, can know that an answer belongs to you. You can feel safe sharing your honest opinions because your answers are truly anonymous.
Freely Available
AmericaThinks is freely available to American voters in every congressional district from sea to shining sea. We are continually working to make it as easy as possible to participate wherever you are. Our questions are simple and to the point. Survey results are graphed to make results easy to understand and visualize.
Non-Profit
AmericaThinks is 501(c)3 non-profit organization. We have no shareholders or hidden interests to promote. We do not accept donations or funds from any party that would expect or appear to influence AmericaThinks as a political tool. AmericaThinks is a genuine effort to help and contribute to present and future generations.
Anonymity = Freedom to Speak.
AmericaThinks is election-grade polling, designed with many of the same goals as our secret ballot system of voting. Anonymous responses to AmericaThinks polls and questions are very much like how we vote in elections today. Anonymous responses are the key to the authenticity and reliability of AmericaThinks. A brief history of the secret ballot will provide a helpful background.
Prior to the late 1800s, Americans cast their votes openly and were actually required to bring their own ballots to the polls. As the right to vote was expanded to more and more people, the political parties begin to print “party ballots” to be used in open voting. This practice opened the door to undesirable practices such as vote selling and voter intimidation. To protect the sanctity of the vote, secret balloting was first adopted for American elections by Massachusetts in 1888. This system allowed a voter to cast their ballot anonymously without having to reveal their vote. As it turns out, this anonymous voting protects both the voter and integrity of the election. With a secret ballot system, a person can vote for the candidate of their choice without fear of reprisal. Today, secret ballot voting is the standard that we use to prevent voting fraud and intimidation.
Anonymous opinions are also more authentic opinions. With a secret ballot process, you are free to express your actual opinion because no one else needs to know about your response. There is no need for political posturing in the presence of your family, friends, co-workers, or the community. AmericaThinks is a liberating tool for millions of Americans who would like to express their opinions in a conflict-free environment.
Canceling Cancel Culture
When community pressure about political and social values becomes extreme, then the culture can become toxic to individual thought and opinions.
The CATO Institute conducted a survey in July 2020 in which 62% of Americans say the current political climate prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. The same survey also found that 32% of employed Americans say they are worried about missing out on career opportunities or losing their job if their political opinions became known.
Recent events have only heightened the tensions associated with sharing our political opinions. AmericaThinks provides a solution to the current cancel culture by offering a means for registered voters of all political stripes to freely share their opinions without fear of cancel culture retribution.
AmericaThinks extends the idea of cryptographically anonymous responses into public polling arena. The result is greater honesty in opinions and more openness to share.
U.S. House Representatives, Electoral Count; February 12, 1913
Smartphones are the key
Smartphones make anonymity possible. For the first time in human history, a majority of Americans have a universally accessible computing device on their person at all times. In 2021, 85% of American adults reported that they owned a smartphone.* That’s about roughly 214 million people!
Smartphones allow for non-trivial cryptographic operations within the AmericaThinks app to help secure, authenticate, and anonymize each participant’s response.
Real People. Real Opinions.
The will of the American people is the backbone and foundation of this representative republican government. Our representatives are our emissaries that speak for what we believe, what we stand for, and what we hope for the future.
Today, social media platforms have made 10 people seem like 10,000 people. The voice of We the People is obscured and misunderstood. Too many times the loud, the boisterous, the fantastic occupy the headlines and seem to reflect majority opinions.
AmericaThinks provide every registered voter a voice in the political arena. No longer do you have to engage in contentious political disagreements in order to make your voice heard. No longer do you have to be afraid of retribution if you share your ideas. No longer do you have to remain silent when you disagree.
AmericaThinks gives everyone a voice - one voice - so that all Americans, whether in the minority or majority, are heard.
A Mirror of You
AmericaThinks is a mirror, not an influencer. In a media world fascinated with pushing a narrative, AmericaThinks takes a road less traveled. AmericaThinks does not represent my opinion or your opinion. AmericaThinks represents our opinion – the collective opinion of American voters in real-time.
Polling For Everyone
AmericaThinks is differs from other voter research organizations in a number of ways. One of the most important differences is that AmericaThinks does not attempt to statistically “balance” the results.
Typical polling selects a small number of participants to opine about a topic and attempts to project those results to the entire population by applying correction factors based on a number of factors such as political affiliation, age, and sex. These types of voter research polls have been proven to be unreliable because of their assumptions about correction factors.
AmericaThinks asks the questions and reports the results without any statistical or correction factors. Why? Any attempt to modify results based on assumed correction factors will always result in unreliable data as well as introduce our bias and assumptions into the results. Both of these outcomes are wrong and manipulative. A founding bedrock principle of AmericaThinks is that every registered voter should have a voice. Therefore, we will not tread on that sacred ground by introducing our interpretations of what results are accurate.
At AmericaThinks, everybody participates with equal voice. Our angle is that we have no angle.
Your Questions, Your Answers
AmericaThinks derives questions from the voters to be asked of the voters. AmericaThinks follows a gamut of topics such as the timeless questions of constitutional rights, legislative proposals, cultural and social issues, and current events. AmericaThinks takes its lead from the participating registered voters and then in turn asks those same voters their opinions.
Advisory Council for Fair and Balanced Polls.
AmericaThinks is serious about a non-partisan approach to public opinion polling. AmericaThinks is the messenger - not the message. We realize that it is difficult to actually be non-partisan, but we are committed to fair and balanced polls.
To that end, we are forming an Advisory Council to assist with leading a neutral conversation on the topics of the day. The Advisory Council will play a central role in establishing a spirit of non-partisanship to seek the common good for all Americans.
This council will be comprised of thought leaders that are recognized contributors in the areas of culture and politics. These leaders believe in and encourage unity and conversation about important topics in America. Their role is to provide commentary, suggestions, and a general review of AmericaThinks polling questions using their own unique, varied, and thoughtful perspectives and life experiences. Their advice is crucial to providing insight, accountability, and a true non-partisan viewpoint for AmericaThinks polls.
The Advisory Council will suggest, review, and discuss possible poll topics and questions. They will be responsible for providing input and feedback to help keep poll questions strictly non-partisan.
Advisory Council members may contribute suggested polling questions and give unsolicited feedback on any aspect of polling questions. Advisory Council feedback may be optionally published in order to provide public insight to the decision-making process.
Advisory Council members will be invited to join with AmericaThinks for one-year renewable terms. Potential members will be invited from public politics, media, academia, technology, and traditional polling organizations. Criteria for selection will include:
a long-held conviction to build a better future,
a commitment to representative democracy,
an understanding of the times,
a careful and thoughtful consideration of each issue, and
a desire to promote and support common values.
Open and Accessible.
AmericaThinks is an open organization because transparency and trust go hand in hand.
Poll Questions
AmericaThinks will strive to be transparent in the selection of poll questions. In general, several types of sources will be used to create polls. Common polls will be used such as those that ask about job approval, participant circumstances, and civic participation. Quote polls will be used in which a public figure is quoted and the participant is asked to indicate their agreement or disagreement. Novel polls will be used to collect opinions, especially real-time types of opinions. Polls will be used to gather opinions on legislative, policy, and judicial outcomes. Suggestions for polls will be collected from participants and the Advisory Council. Where possible, polls that are considered will be published in a list to promote transparency in how polls and questions are selected.
Results
Polls results are published in summary, detail, and transactional form. Most poll summary results are published in real-time as the poll is in progress. In cases where real-time results might influence the outcome, results may be held until the poll is completed. Summary polling results are published as nationwide totals and/or nationwide electoral totals, state totals, and congressional district totals. It is particularly important to note that results are published by congressional districts so that elected representatives are aware of the opinion in their district as contrasted the national sentiment reported by most sample-based polling.
After a poll closes, both detail and transactional poll results are published. Detail poll results are a full list of every individual opinion included in the poll. Transactional poll results include all the transactions that make up each individual opinion. Both detail and transactional poll results can be independently audited to validate the published summary results of the poll.
Protocols
AmericaThinks uses opinion gathering protocols known as Reliable Opinion Polling that have been developed by David Smith. This protocol and corresponding intellectual property is licensed to AmericaThinks by David Smith. The Reliable Opinion Polling protocol will be published and publicly available as AmericaThinks publicly launches. It is essential that the cryptographic protocols used for AmericaThinks are publicly available to develop strong and trustworthy polling results. Publicly available cryptographic protocols can be analyzed, attacked, and improved. In fact, if a protocol must be kept secret in order to be secure, then that protocol is not secure at all. Publicly available cryptographic protocols will allow third parties to independently audit the detailed and transactional poll result data in order to have an arms-length assurance of the accuracy of published polling results.
Organization
AmericaThinks is a 501(c)3 organization that is a public charity. As such, we filed a yearly IRS 990 that details how funding is acquired and spent. Since AmericaThinks operates for the public good, the public is entitled to know that AmericaThinks is a good steward of that trust.
Privacy.
We treat your privacy like we want our privacy to be treated. What does that mean?
Our covenant with you is that we take no advertising, sell no lists, nor allow no political campaigns use AmericaThinks. Normally, “free” services actually sell advertising, lists, or access to their users. All of the popular search engines and social media companies profit by selling information about you.
At AmericaThinks, you are not the product. AmericaThinks does not profit from selling information about you. Our primary mission is the integrity of our polls. As such, we operate entirely for the benefit of you, the American voter.
Privacy of You
We collect publicly available information about you during registration in order to verify your identity and authenticate your voter registration status. This information includes email, phone number, and public voter registration information. We do not store images of credentials or save any non-public information from those credentials. We do not disclose your email or phone number to any third parties for any purpose. We will periodically conduct risk-limiting voter registration audits to prove that only registered voters are participating in polls. Only voter registration information that is already in the public domain is used for a voter registration audit and such information is only disclosed to recognized auditing entities.
We do not sell advertising or allow any third parties to contact you. We will contact you to verify and manage your registration to encourage participation with AmericaThinks.
Privacy of Your Opinions
The backbone of AmericaThinks is the anonymity of your opinions. You have complete privacy of opinions because your identity is separate from your opinions. If you share your opinion with someone, that information cannot be used to find your opinion in the results. Unless someone is watching you as you use the app to express your opinion, you cannot prove your opinion to any third party. If someone discovers one of your opinions, they cannot use that information to discover other opinions that you have shared with AmericaThinks. AmericaThinks cannot know your opinions because your identity is removed from your opinion before it leaves your smartphone.
A detailed privacy statement will be available prior to the public launch of AmericaThinks. For more information, please email privacy@americathinks.org.
Election-Grade Polling Explained.
Opinion polls and elections are essential to representative governments and open societies around the world. We are increasingly dependent on opinion polls as a critical tool in forming public policy.
Current methods of opinion polling depend on the trustworthiness of the polling organization and belief that individual opinions will not be publicly disclosed. These tenuous propositions are increasingly failing to produce reliable opinion polls.
Most of the current polling methods are simplistic private solutions that rely on a “trust me” type of mentality. A growing distrust of the outcomes of polls is sowing seeds of dissension in our culture and breaking down the bonds of community that make us strong, peaceful, and stable.
To reverse this trend, we must have evidence-based opinion polls that can be accepted as legitimate to everybody – especially to the losers of a poll. [1] Today’s opinion polls must be replaced by open, verifiable, and auditable solutions that can be trusted by everyone.
In fact, since opinion polls play a role that is approaching the importance of elections, opinion polls must become election-grade polling. This is no easy undertaking. [2] Numerous solutions have been proposed and analyzed extensively [examples of which 1, 2] in the literature.
[1] Matthew Bernhard, Josh Benaloh, J. Alex Halderman, Ronald L. Rivest, Peter Y. A. Ryan, Philip B. Stark, Vanessa Teague, Poorvi L. Vora, Dan S. Wallach. Public Evidence from Secret Ballots. In Second International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting, E-Vote-Id 2017, pages 121-140
[2] Matthew Bernhard, Election Security is Harder Than You Think. PdD thesis, University of Michigan, 2020.
Reliable Opinion Polling
AmericaThinks is using a novel solution proposed by David Smith known as Reliable Opinion Polling. Reliable Opinion Polling is based on authenticated participants, anonymous responses, and auditable results. The technical implementation is based on nested blind signatures, split-key signatures, and one-time use keys that incorporate elements of a non-deterministic mixnet and a digital signature threshold scheme.
A novel contribution of this work is a protocol that accommodates a multi-party capable threshold scheme with steps performed in parallel by several parties and the results compared and de-duplicated during audit. Another novel contribution of this work is that participant responses may be published in plaintext without compromising anonymity. Additionally, polling and election data can be published and results can be directly audited. Intermediate data and work logs are retained to enable statistical audits.
The proposed solution has the characteristics of a well-formed electronic voting system and will be extensively discussed in upcoming whitepapers and disclosures. One of the key observations of this work: public opinion polls and elections are very similar solutions.
The security of this protocol does not reliable on “secret steps” or hidden algorithms. The detailed protocol and commentary will be publicly available as software solutions are published.
For additional information, please contact reliableopinions@americathinks.org.
Reliable Opinion Polling authenticates participants to respond anonymously to a poll in such a manner that the responses can be audited for accuracy, completeness, fraud, and correctness. Reliable Opinion Polling protocols provide a substantial improvement in the level of privacy, reliability, security, and auditability over current polling systems.
With the advent of widespread adoption of desktop and handheld computing devices that are connected to the Internet, a much-improved form of opinion polling is possible. Using connected computing devices, interactions with the voting participant can take full advantage of cryptographic privacy, security, and digital witness methodologies to facilitate reliable, auditable, and anonymous opinion polls of large populations of participants. Polling results may be accurately reported after-the-fact or in substantially real-time by geographic, political, or other characteristics.
This new methodology of polling is not simply the old methods of polling reworked into a digital format. Reliable Opinion Polling is a new Web 3.0 technology that can be used to address the current shortcomings of opinion polls. This methodology is a complete re-imagining of opinion polling based on a foundation of authenticated participants, anonymous responses, and auditable results.
Reliable Opinion Polling advances the state of the art in opinion polling to create a system that implements requirements of an idealized secret ballot electronic voting system. Reliable Opinion Polling accomplishes the following:
Only authorized participants can respond
No participant can respond more than once
No one can know a participant’s response
No one can duplicate a participant’s response
No one can change a participant’s response without discovery
Responses are published but cannot be associated with a participant
A participant can know that if their response was recorded, it was recorded correctly
A participant has statistical certainty that their response was recorded
A participant cannot prove their response to any third party
Anyone can verify that the responses were recorded correctly
Anyone can verify responses were tallied correctly
Anyone can know all the responses
Authorized participants are validated by risk limiting audits
Any disclosure of a response by a participant does not lead to disclosure of any other response by the same participant
Optionally, each participant’s response may be independently audited
A foundational design principle of Reliable Opinion Polling is the principle that responses may be published as plain-text answers that can be known by anyone. Generally, responses are stored in plain-text format and tallied in substantially real-time. In some cases, responses are stored in an encrypted format during the course of an opinion poll and then decrypted and stored as plain-text after the opinion poll is closed. At first, this approach may seem counterintuitive for a “secret-ballot” opinion polling system. On further examination, it is clear that for a non-trivial number of participants, that a “secret ballot” can be accomplished by ensuring that a participant cannot be associated with their response. Reliable Opinion Polling provides that both the participant and the response may be validated but cannot be associated together.
Other systems for electronic voting have been developed in which it is postulated that responses are always kept secret. These systems utilize homomorphic encryption methodologies that allow basic computing on encrypted data. This method allows encrypted responses to be tallied without requiring the response to be first decrypted. This approach brings with it complexities and limitations that are addressed in other publications. Interestingly, this approach could be adopted by Reliable Opinion Polling as an additional method of submitting and tallying responses.
Reliable Opinion Polling General Characteristics
Reliable Opinion Polling authenticates participants to respond anonymously to a poll in such a manner that the responses can be audited for accuracy, completeness, fraud, and correctness. The general characteristics of Reliable Opinion Polling are as follows:
Participants use networked computing devices such as smart phones, tablets, desktop computers, and notebook computers to connect to servers and/or service applications in order to accomplish participation in a poll.
Participants can be limited to those with particular qualifications such as those that are currently registered to vote or those that are authenticated members of an organizational unit. An authenticated participant is issued digital credentials in the form of digital certificates.
Opinion polls can contain multiple questions that use simple or complex branching logic to determine the questions to be ask. Opinion polls are typically published with specified beginning and ending times. Participants may respond to currently open opinion polls at their convenience. Opinion polls may collect interactive responses and opinions during live or recorded events. Opinion polls may collect participant opinions as free-form text responses. Opinion polls may collect information such as data sets, articles, whistleblower reports, news reports, video, and audio submitted by the participant.
Participants answer one or more opinion poll questions in which they indicate one or more choices from a list of answer options or candidates.
Participant responses are submitted and recorded in an anonymous response protocol. The participant is the only one that can know both their identity and their response. Participant characteristics may be submitted separately or in combination with participant responses.
For non-interactive questions, participants can only express their opinion a single time for each question ask. For interactive responses, participants can repeatedly express their opinions to one or more questions with respect to continuous content on a timeline.
Opinion polls can be configured so that an auditing authority can ascertain the validity and accuracy of a participant’s opinion without revealing the identity of the participant.
The identity of a participant and their qualifications to participate can be verified by an auditing authority without revealing the responses of the participant.
A participant’s response cannot be duplicated or changed without detection.
Optionally, a duplicate or forged response can be detected and removed from the collective opinion poll results without damaging the integrity of the opinion poll.
Optionally, test participants may submit test responses to facilitate an audit of system services and components in substantially real-time.
Participants can be assured that their opinion was collected, reported, and tallied correctly.
Responses can be tallied in substantially real-time and publicly reported. The responses can be reported in subgroups based on characteristics of participants.
Characteristics of the participants can be tallied in substantially real-time and publicly reported. The characteristics of the participants can be reported in subgroups that correspond to response subgroups.
Anyone can validate that all participant responses have been tallied correctly.
After the opinion poll is completed, internal and/or third-party auditors can perform an audit of the participants and responses to an opinion poll and publish the results.
Participants may contribute suggestions, questions, choices, links, or other content that is collected for possible use in future opinion polls.
Observers have access to substantially real-time tallies of participant opinions.
Observers can broadcast or publish the tallies of participant opinions.
These and other Reliable Opinion Polling characteristics will be further disclosed and discussed in upcoming publications. Reliable Opinion Protocols and characteristics are subject to change.