Tutorial: Voting in Polls & Changing Your Vote

At the end of submission period, a moderator will post a poll of the entries for the community to vote on. This will determine which entrants move on to the next week. You will be able to recognize the post by its subject line (often "Poll Time!") and tag ("weekly poll"). However, what do you do when you find the post?

Disclaimer: The following images are examples of what a poll looks like during each stage of the voting process. The poll used is from Week Two of July 2010, and it can be found at this link. The entries voted for in this example do not reflect the author's actual votes; it is instead the Fibonacci sequence. Images may be clicked on for a larger size.

Below is an example of what the poll looks like before you vote. It's basically a blank slate, waiting for you to read each of the entries and decide which ones you'd like to vote for.

Once you've read the entries and are ready to vote, it's a simple matter of clicking in the square box beside each entry for which you'd like to vote. You may vote for as many entries as you'd like. Here's a sample image of what the poll might look like now:

Now, click on the button on the bottom that says "Submit Poll". This is how your votes are counted. Once you've clicked, the page should reload, and the poll will look similar to this:

But wait! What if you realize you made a mistake? You forgot to vote for the last entry! Never fear, brave voter. We can fix that. Look above the poll. There should be a link that says "Click here to edit your vote." Once you click on this link, you'll see the poll with the checkboxes visible again. Here, you can change your vote to what you intended. When you click on "Submit Poll" again, LiveJournal will change the votes recorded for you and update the overall results to reflect your new vote.

However, it's possible that the moderator may forget to post that link. It happens - moderators are only human, after all. Even this is not cause for fear! It's still an easy matter to change your vote. Simply click on the link at the top of the poll that says "Poll #1593920" (or whatever the number for this particular poll is). It will take you to this page:

Now, click on "Fill out Poll", change your vote, and don't forget to submit the poll when you're done! To return to the entry in which the poll was posted, you can click on "Discuss Results".

And now for the hard part - waiting for the voting period to end so you can find out who won!