The secret ballot, at work

2026-11-03 · The Scrums team

Today is Election Day in the US. The secret ballot that elections depend on was first used in Victoria, Australia, in 1856. The idea behind it works just as well in a team meeting.

Today is Election Day in the US. Whoever people vote for, they'll do it in private, and that's taken for granted now. It wasn't always. For much of the 19th century, voting in many places was done out loud or on ballots anyone could read, and voters faced pressure from employers, landlords and neighbours. The secret ballot, first used in the Australian colony of Victoria in 1856 and long known elsewhere as the "Australian ballot", changed that. People vote more freely when nobody's watching.

Teams vote all the time, even if they don't call it that. Estimating a story is a vote. Choosing what to discuss in a retro is a vote. Rating how the team is doing is a vote. And many teams still do these out loud, in turn, with the most senior person often speaking first.

Where secrecy helps a team

Estimates. When people hear the first number before giving their own, they drift towards it.
Priorities. When people can see the votes piling up, many add theirs to the leading topic.
Honest ratings. "How's the team doing?" gets a kinder answer in public than in private.
Feedback. Some things only get said when nobody knows who said them.

The vote is secret; the discussion afterwards is open. That's the balance: everyone forms their view independently, then the team talks about the result together.

How Scrums keeps the ballot secret

Sprint poker: everyone sees who has voted, but not what. Our server doesn't send anyone's card to anyone else until the reveal.
Dot voting in retros: the tallies stay hidden until voting closes.
Health checks: ratings stay private until the results are shown, and an anonymous check never shows who rated what, even then.
Retro cards: written privately, revealed together, and anonymous by default. The authors of anonymous cards never leave our server.

Try a round of sprint poker in your browser, no account needed, and see how different the numbers look when nobody can follow anybody else.