Preference polls

[coolbawn]

I am a vBulletin newbie and although I have a systems background, I’m not a modern-day programmer, so I’m not sure how hard it would be for someone to produce a vB plug-in for the following …..

It would be good if polls could support preference voting as well as the existing first-past-the-post poll. In other words:

Allow user to add a poll with n textual options eg 4 options: A, B, C and D (no change required).
Allow user to specify poll type: 1 = first-past-the-post; 2 = preference. If type = 1, no change. If type = 2 ….

Allow voting user to state his/her preferences eg A = 4, B = 2, C = 1, D = 3.
The user doesn’t have to vote on all options, so can merely specify B = 2 and C = 1.
Ideally vB checks that votes submitted are consecutive from 1 and no more than the total options.

vB keeps a record for each vote eg: Voter=1; A=4; B=2; C=1; D=3.
vB displays the results of the first preference votes in the same way as now for first-past-the-post.
Admin or moderator dumps the vote records from the MySQL database to into a worksheet to analyze the results, namely:
- Eliminate the least popular option (with fewest 1st preference votes)
- Reallocate that option’s 2nd preference votes to the other options
- Eliminate options and reallocate their votes until the winner is identified.

Presumably / maybe:

The input type in the poll would change from checkbox to an integer.
Each vote must already be recorded so vB knows who has voted.
The poll display logic would change to look for fields on records with a “1” instead of a check.

I couldn’t find an existing plug-in. How tricky is this to develop ? Anyone interested ? How useful might it be for the community ? First-past-the-post is sometimes fine, but is often discredited. In my experience, forums would use far, far more polls if the polling method was suitable. Please vote.