About TallyLab

Who we are

TallyLab started as a tool for a book club that got curious about voting. We kept wondering: would a different book have won if we'd counted another way? This site lets you find out.

The first time we used it, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions won under every method. That's common when one option is a clear favorite. The methods start to disagree when the race is close or crowded. See them disagree →

Voting methods

How each one works, where it's used, and its trade-offs.

Rules every poll follows

You don't need to read these to make a poll. They explain what TallyLab does behind the scenes.

• One vote per browser. Voting again from the same browser replaces your earlier vote. This is built for friendly groups, not secure elections: someone could vote again from another browser.
• Votes are anonymous unless the poll asks for names. Even then, the results show who voted, but not how each person voted. Scheduling polls are different: like a sign-up sheet, they show which times each person can make.
• Options appear in a random order each time the voting page loads, so no one benefits from being listed first. A poll's organizer can keep their own order instead, which suits dates and times.
• Ties are broken by a random draw that stays the same for each poll. The results page says when this happened.
• Anyone with a poll's link can vote and see the results, which update as votes come in.
• The organizer decides when voting ends. They can close voting from the poll's Manage page, and reopen it. A closed poll keeps showing its results but takes no new votes.