Can you use Google Forms or Doodle for an association vote?

Someone on the board will suggest it, and it is a fair question. Google Forms is free, everyone knows it, and a Doodle takes two minutes to set up. For many things an association decides, that is exactly right. For a general meeting vote, a board election or anything a member could later challenge, it is not, and the reason is worth understanding rather than taking on faith.

The anonymity trade-off

A form is either anonymous or identified. If it is anonymous, nobody can check that the person answering was a member, that they answered only once, or how many votes they were entitled to. If it is identified, by collecting an email address or requiring a sign-in, the person who owns the form sees every answer next to a name, and the vote is not secret.

A ballot needs both properties at once: proof that each eligible member voted once, and no way for anyone to see how. A voting system achieves that by separating the two, so that the right to vote is tied to the member and used up when the vote is cast, while the vote itself is stored without reference to who cast it. A form has no such separation, and no setting adds one. The guide on secret ballots online covers what the separation must look like.

One vote per member

A form link is a shared link. Anyone who has it can respond, and respond again. The "limit to one response" setting requires respondents to sign in with a Google account, which ties identity to the answer and excludes members who do not have one. Doodle is worse: the name field is free text, and anybody can add a row under any name. A forwarded link, a member who votes for a spouse, or a non-member who was on the mailing list are all invisible in the result.

Weights, proxies and majorities

In a housing association the vote follows units or shares, and a form counts heads. There is no way to give one respondent three votes and another one and a half. Proxies have no mechanism either: the proxy holder would have to submit the form twice, which the response limit blocks, or the form is anonymous and nobody knows a proxy was used. And the form gives you a raw count; whether a proposal needed a majority of votes cast, of all eligible votes, or two-thirds of shares, is something you work out by hand afterwards, with abstentions and non-responses in the wrong column. The guide on weighted voting shows how much there is to get wrong.

The record

The responses land in a spreadsheet the owner can edit. There is no proof that a row was not added, removed or changed, no timestamp for when the vote opened and closed, and no link between the responses and a frozen list of who was eligible. When a member challenges the result, the board is left saying "trust us". The output of a real ballot is a record you can hand to the person challenging it: eligible members, votes cast, the distribution, timestamps, and nothing that can be quietly edited.

Live meetings

At a general meeting, votes are opened and closed item by item, amendments appear on the spot, and the chair declares each result before moving on. Opening a new form for every item, reading the results off a pie chart and closing it in time is awkward but possible. That is not the main problem, though. The main problem is everything above.

When they are fine anyway

• Finding a date for the meeting. That is what Doodle is for.
• Non-binding consultations: which activities members want, which colour the fence should be, whether there is interest in a summer party.
• Collecting nominations and proposals before the notice goes out. Here you want to know who submitted what, so an identified form is right.
• Sign-ups and attendance for the meeting itself.
• A small board on an open, uncontested matter, where everyone can see everyone's answer and the result goes into the minutes, provided the bylaws allow decisions without a meeting. The guide on board decisions between meetings covers the conditions.

The rule of thumb: if the outcome binds the members, spends their money, elects someone or could end up in front of a lawyer, use a system built for voting. If it is a preference poll, a form is fine, and it is honest to call it a poll rather than a vote.

What to look for instead

A voting system for associations is not complicated. It should send personal links from an eligibility list you control, carry voting weights and proxies, let the chair make any item secret, open and close votes live, and produce a record with timestamps. Data should be stored in the EU and deleted on a schedule you have agreed. The cost is small compared with holding a general meeting again because the first one could not be defended.