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Cumulative voting

Cumulative voting

Speed up collective decision-making

Practice 75

Aim

The aim of this method is to decide between several ideas by assigning them points. It’s a way of enabling each participant to express their preferences in relation to the proposals presented.

Instructions

Time needed: 30 minutes

Material :

a flip-chart or similar
round stickers

Key steps

Option 1

Start by presenting the proposals to the participants. It’s important that they properly understand the different choices before proceeding. You can choose to present the proposals in various ways: verbally, in the form of posters, information sheets, etc.
List the various options that they can choose from in a table (draw this up in advance on a flip-chart or something similar).
Next, give each participant an equal number of stickers, representing the number of points they have to allocate.
E.g.: A maximum of 10 stickers for 5 proposals
In line with their preferences, each participant must allocate “points” to each proposal by applying their stickers on the table next to the proposal’s name.
E.g.: between 1 and 5 points per proposal

Traditionally, the proposal that gets the most votes wins. You can also initiate a group reflection:
What about the other ideas that got lots of votes, or those that got the least, etc.

Option 2

In this variation, start by presenting the options (1) and presenting them in a table (2), but then get the participants to use different coloured stickers so that you can gather additional information.
E.g.: ask the participants to put a green sticker for “I want to put this idea into practice” and red for “I don’t want to put this idea into practice”.

Tips and advice

Instead of stickers, you can ask the group to draw a stick to represent each point (tally).
You can also add restrictions to suit your specific scenario.
E.g.: you can’t vote for your own proposal, you can’t put all your stickers next to the same proposal, etc.

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