Patent US 4,023,729

A system is provided for facilitating free communication of group attitudes and responses through a series of group decisional processes based on voting. In the preferred form, a vote selector unit, such as a keyboard provides each voting entity within the group with means to choose one of a variety of informational characters, such as the letters of the alphabet and appropriate punctuation marks, in sequence to form a message in response to an inquiry or other stimulus. A data processing system senses an electrical signal output from each vote selector means to record and tabulate the choice of each voting entity during successive discrete polling intervals and counts the total votes accorded each informational character during each such interval. The total votes thus counted for each informational character are successively compared to determine the specific character or characters that received a predetermined plurality of the votes during each such polling interval. The character or characters so determined are then displayed and communicated to the group before the next polling interval to form the next succeeding element of the message. During each succeeding polling interval, the individual voting entities are informed of the previous selected elements of the message so that each subsequent voting determination can be based on prior decisions.