🗳️ Polling & Civic Decision Context
Overview
The Polling Context enables administrators to collect structured public opinion from citizens on civic topics, proposals, and community decisions.
Unlike forums, which support open discussion, polling provides a quantifiable and controlled decision mechanism.
In simple terms, this context answers:
What does the community collectively think or prefer?
🎯 Responsibilities
The Polling Context handles:
- Creation of civic polls by administrators
- Optional contextual images for clarity
- Definition of poll options
- Secure vote submission by citizens
- Enforcement of one-vote-per-user rules
- Poll expiration and activation control
- Aggregation of voting data for analysis
This context focuses on decision input, not execution.
🧩 Owned Models
| Table | Description |
|---|---|
polls |
Poll definitions and configuration |
poll_options |
Available voting choices |
poll_votes |
Individual citizen votes |
🔗 Relationship Overview
- A poll is created by an administrator
- A poll may contain multiple options
- Citizens may vote once per poll
- Each vote is linked to one option
- Polls may expire or be manually deactivated
This ensures fair and auditable voting.
🖼️ Context Diagram
This diagram illustrates how polls are created, voted on, and analyzed within CivicEdge.
🧠 Design Notes
- Voting is restricted to authenticated users.
- Database-level uniqueness ensures one vote per user per poll.
- Optional images provide visual context without affecting voting logic.
- Vote counts may be cached for performance but derived from raw votes.
- Poll results are immutable once the poll expires.