My Vote Forward: My priorities. My opinion. My vote.

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.

Workshop participants pin and read handwritten notes sorted on a wall.

Part one

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

How priorities work

Neighbors stand and talk together beside an outdoor information tent.

Part two

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

How opinions work

A quiet circular reading room with wooden shelves under a domed skylight.

Part three

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

How private voting works

A modern container ship under way at sea, drawn as a cutaway to the keel, with the course running ahead and a dolphin leaping at the bow — Every vote is a sealed box, counted and never opened. The course is what we share. Some boxes show an opinion on the outside. The whole ship moves forward together.A modern ultra-large container ship under way at sea, moving forward from left to right, drawn as a grand cutaway from the radar mast down through the hull to the keel, the deep water under it and the seabed. Ahead, on the right, the sun sits on the horizon. Hundreds of identical containers stand in tall stacks on deck, and the cutaway of the hold shows hundreds more below, each one closed and sealed. A few containers carry a painted outside face, a disc, chevrons, an arrow, a wave, and a few stacks fly a single small pennant; most are plain. Forward of midships the bridge rises above the stacks, with the route plotted on its chart display, and the same course runs ahead across the water as a dashed line toward the sun. Aft stand the funnel and the engine room, with the shaft running to the propeller and the rudder under the stern. The double bottom and keel run the length of the hull. A bow wave curls off the stem, a long wake spreads astern, and a small red, white and blue dolphin with three stars leaps ahead of the bow, facing the way the ship is going. There are no people and no words. What it means: each sealed container is one private vote, locked and sealed, its contents never shown; the stack is counted, never opened. The course plotted on the bridge and running ahead on the water is the priorities everyone shares. The painted faces and pennants that some containers carry, and most do not, are opinion: what a person chooses to show on the outside, never what is inside. The ship under way, with its bow wave and long wake, is participation that keeps moving forward between elections, and the hull and keel below the water are the foundation of trust and security that keeps it upright.

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.

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.

Read why preferences and ballots differ

A 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.

Same priorityHousing matters most

Different opinionsMore apartments, or fewer

The problems

The large problems this work takes on

Polarization, distrust, unequal participation, agenda capture and years of silence between elections. Each problem gets the evidence, the strongest competing views, and a plain statement of what My Vote Forward can and cannot do about it.

See every problem

Between elections

Participation in My Vote Forward continues between elections

Most public decisions do not start on election day. My Vote Forward describes how a person can follow a decision from start to finish, state priorities along the way, and understand where a decision is actually made.

A problem is noticedPeople, reporters or officials name something that is not working.
Responses are proposedDifferent groups put forward different answers to the same problem.
Some reach a ballotA few proposals are developed into a measure or a decision item.
A decision is madeBy voters, a legislature, a council or an agency, under its own rules.
It is carried out, or notImplementation, budgets and results, which the public can keep watching.

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.

Follow a proposal over time From issue to ballot item

Subjects

What the public cares about, and who actually decides

For each subject: what people prioritize and why it is hard to measure, which level of government decides what, and what the research shows.

EducationSchools, teachers, outcomes

Economy and workJobs, wages, prices

Health and careAccess, cost, caregiving

Housing and communitiesHomes, rents, neighborhoods

Infrastructure and transportRoads, transit, water

Environment and energyClimate, power, land

Safety and justicePolicing, courts, prisons

Government and rightsElections, speech, privacy

Immigration and citizenshipBorders, status, belonging

Defense and foreign affairsSecurity, alliances, aid

All subjects

Case studies

What happened when the public was asked

Citizens assemblies, referendums, participatory budgets and internet voting trials, including the ones that failed. Each case is told with its sources and its limits.

Referendums and direct democracySwitzerlandHow does Swiss direct democracy actually work, what has it produced, and where has it failed or been contested?14 min read Deliberation and citizens assembliesIrelandWhat did Ireland’s citizens’ assemblies actually change, and what decided whether their recommendations reached voters and succeeded?11 min read Deliberation and citizens assembliesvTaiwanHow did vTaiwan turn online opinion mapping into national rulemaking, what did it change, and why did its influence depend on officials choosing to use it?11 min read Deliberation and citizens assembliesBritish ColumbiaIf ordinary citizens chosen by lot design a reform and voters then decide it, what does a near miss teach about thresholds, information and authority?11 min read Deliberation and citizens assembliesFranceWhen a government asks a randomly selected group of citizens to write policy and promises to pass it on unchanged, what actually happens to the proposals?13 min read

All case studies

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?
Who sets the agenda
Intimidation
How can people be pressured by family, employers or anyone else?
How pressure is resisted
Exclusion
Who gets left out, and why participation counts can mislead.
Who has been kept out
Manipulation
Wording, coordinated campaigns and unequal resources.
How wording shapes answers
Security
What a website can protect today, and what an official election would require.
The threat model
Identity
Why signing in to an account does not prove a person is eligible to vote.
Sign-in versus eligibility
Accountability
Who answers for the operator, and how decisions are appealed.
Who answers for the operator
Authority
Which institutions can lawfully decide, and which cannot.
Which institutions decide

See every hard question

The privacy promise

Three kinds of participation, three different rules

The framework is built around what may never be shared, not around what can be collected. These defaults hold everywhere in My Vote Forward; the privacy chapter breaks them into five classes of data.

PrioritiesCounted together. Only group totals can be published.
OpinionsPrivate unless you choose to share one, question by question.
Your voteAlways secret. There is no setting that shares it.

Privacy and data Security and its limits

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.

Framework

Trust and governance

Research

History

Browse the full library

Framework, demo and voting

What exists today, and what is not offered

My Vote Forward is an educational framework. It does not run official votes, and its demo uses simulated data.

A woman sits at a bright kitchen table with a laptop and a cup of tea.

The frameworkAvailableThis site. An educational explanation of priorities, opinions and private voting, with sources.
The demoNot public yetA separate interactive demonstration of how the ideas could work, using simulated data. No official votes are cast there.
Official votingNot offeredReal, 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.

Full status

Sources and method

Built to be checked

239chapters published, each with sources, version and review date

1,204distinct sources cited across the site

2,490material claims recorded in the public claim ledger

464kwords of explanation, last reviewed October 26, 2026

Sources at the point of claim

Material claims cite their source where they are made. Sources that cannot be checked are not used, and every source appears in one public bibliography.

The strongest case on every side

Each chapter presents competing interpretations in their strongest form and ends with the questions that remain unresolved.

Versioned and correctable

Every chapter shows its version and last review date. Corrections are welcome, and revisions are recorded in the changelog.

See every source Read the changelog Report a correction

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.

About My Vote Forward