Online polls are a joke anyway; they're never representative and very to mildly easily to manipulate. No surprise then, and fortunate, that the voting booth is never used to actually take any decisions. Technical safeguards on it are pretty low as well and have to be since it does not require registration to submit a vote. So the poll is just there as a bit of momentary distraction and as such, restrictions that would make it less fun would be more than useless.

Just my thoughts.

Makeshifts last the longest.

You could be able to look at past polls, even if you never voted. But you could not look at the present poll, untill you have voted in it. That was my idea. Honestly I don't think that Monks completely base their opinions on others that have allready voted. But I've heard people say that they feel that they have voted for the wrong candidate, if their candidate looses an election.

Funny you should say that. I actually like voting for the underdog. I find I can usually guess what the most popular vote will be ahead of time anyway.

That the most popular vote for a previous poll about Object Oriented Programming was "A good approach to many problems, though not the only one." In all seriousness, this is the only answer any self-respecting programmer can accept.

Which is why I was quite happy to vote for the outrageously impossible to defend "The bomb. The bee's knees. Uncut cool. The True Way."

And besides, Perl Monks isn't a democracy, it's a dictatorship :)