On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 11:35 PM, Tom U wrote:

We would like to be able to poll them, but if responding to a poll requires creating an account, that is not going to happen.  So, polls, not so useful for our community.

Tom -- As others have stated, all of your subscribers already have an account, so that's probably not the problem. The problem is that they must log in, re-find the poll after doing so, and generally figure out how to navigate the site and use the menu system.

A substantial fraction of my members (more than 75%) never log in, and when they click the link, are befuddled to be presented with a login screen. Such folks either give up entirely, or simply reply to the #poll-notice via email; which as we all know, creates its own problems. On that basis I agree that it would be nice if a subscriber could simply click on a provided link to give their poll response without having to jump through all those hoops.

How to do that? Well, you could provide a separate link for each poll response (as opposed to the generic "vote now"). The link would code which subscriber responded and what that response was (via a query string or something like that), and automatically record that vote in the poll.

Downsides:
-- Not sure how this proposal might function in light of the "allow multiple choices" flag.
-- Members who indiscriminately forward group emails could inadvertently create a "proxy voting" situation.

Back to the original proposal:  Allowing non-account holders to do this? Nope, I can't agree with that. At a minimum, voting needs to be restricted to those who have received the poll email, and are still subscribed at the time they click a button.

Regards,
Bruce