Editing Selectricity (section)

== What is Selectricity? ==

:''What is this Selectricity? What might communities use it for?''

Selectricity is "voting machinery for the masses." It consists of a suite of tools to allow groups of people to make decisions using cutting edge voting technologies.  While most voting technology projects are geared to government based decision-making, ''Selectricity'' aims to apply decades of voting research created for governments toward every day decisions. The system emphasizes preferential decision-making, cryptographic means of voter verifiability, and algorithmically complex election methods.

Small group decisions are pervasive and persistent. Often, the simplest methods lead to less than ideal outcomes. Imagine the following scenario:

:A group of friends needs to select a restaurant for a meeting. The group has strong, divergent feelings: half the group loves Chinese food but hates Mexican; half loves Mexican food but hates Chinese; everyone thinks Italian would be a good option. A simple voting will never select the Italian restaurant because it has the least votes.  Forgoing a voting system altogether will usually result in a decision by the loudest in the group or the first person to speak up.

Using preferential election methods, Selectricity groups in these types of situations makes better decisions quickly and easily by selecting the most preferred method or the choice that maximizes preference within the group Of course, Selectricity is not limited to mundane decisions like the one in the example --- it has already been used both to schedule meeting times, poll friends on the name of a child, and elect non-profit boards of directors.

The current "live" Selectricity currently includes the following different major modules:

* [http://selectricity.org/quickvote/create Selectricity QuickVotes]: Simple, quick web-based elections. A QuickVote can be created in under 1 minute by a user with no experience with Selectricity. Voters usually vote in under 30 seconds.
* [http://rubyvote.rubyforge.org/ RubyVote]: A library that incorporates the algorithmically complex parts of election method. This makes it possible for software developers with their own applications to simple add advanced voting machinery and better election technology into their application.
* [http://selectricity.org/about/anywhere Selectricity Anywhere]: A simple SMS/mobile phone-based interface to Selectricity that allows users to create, vote, and view results entirely from a normal "non-smart" mobile phone.