I want a web site that combines an online poll with an open-ended survey to collect the poll possibilities. Let me unpack that with an example.
Suppose four friends and I want to meet for coffee on Thursday, but we don’t know where to meet. So we ask a question: “Where should we meet on Thusday?” The poll is open for a day and during that time each person sends in the name of a place where they want to meet. So at the end of a day you have a list of three choices: Primo, Caribou, and Starbucks. Now the computer automatically sends out a poll to each person invited to the event asking them to vote for where they want to go. The poll is open for another day and whatever location gets the most votes is where you meet your friends for coffee.
Basically this is a voting solution that steps through two parts: the nominations and the actual votes. Surely someone has built something like this before? But my cursory search of online poll products shows that most of them have one person/account that creates the poll and then whoever submits the online form votes in the poll.
Clubs or civic groups could use this to choose new leaders. Individuals could use it to setup meetings with colleagues. A book club could use it to nominate book titles and then choose which ones to read.
Spin-offs and enhancements are easy to think of: make it javascriptable and embeddable on web pages so it can be inserted into the middle of blog posts; go mobile and let people nominate and vote via text messaging; email people you want to poll and use the email addresses as an ID to prevent spam or unwanted access.
