Secret Ballots

Adhocracy does not allow for any kind of secret voting. A full public voting record is available for all users, at any time. There are three reasons to do this:

At its core, Adhocracy is a discussion tool. Having the participants state their opinions on an issue is a part of this discussion and should thus happen in public. Without voting records, delegation becomes useless. If the voting record of delegation agents wasn't published, one would have to trust the agents to honestly identify their intentions regarding each vote. This would create a critical trust limitation against delegation. While one could imagine a system in which only those who wish to receive delegations would publish their voting records, such a system would create unequal conditions for voting between public and private voters, thus violating another important principle of any democratic voting system.

Keeping voting records a secret is hard. Trust in the system would be predicated on the assumption that no leaks - including those resulting from indirect attacks - occurred. This assumption is bound to be compromised at some stage, creating a system with dubious security and privacy. Publishing all voting records is thus a step avoid creating misconceptions among users regarding privacy. The voters themselves can then decide whether a particular topic is fit for public voting and otherwise go off-channel, using paper ballots.