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Voting

CivicOS has three kinds of "voting" that citizens use to make their voice count between elections:

  • Upvoting issues — pushes the most important problems up the feed.
  • Signing petitions — a formal, counted show of support for a cause.
  • Following representatives — flags who you want to hear from.

None of these are anonymous. All three are tied to your verified account.

Upvoting an issue​

Upvotes are a lightweight signal — "this matters to me." When enough citizens upvote an issue, it rises in the community feed and gets more attention from admins and representatives.

How to upvote:

  1. Open an issue.
  2. Click the ▲ Upvote button.

Click again to remove your upvote. One vote per account is enforced by the database — repeated clicks just flip you between upvoted and not.

You can see every issue you've upvoted under Profile → My upvotes.

Signing a petition​

Petitions are the heavier form of endorsement. Each has a signature goal and, optionally, a deadline. Sign to add your name to the count.

How to sign:

  1. Open a petition.
  2. Click Sign this petition.

Requirements:

  • Verified email.
  • Membership in the petition's community.

The signature count updates immediately. The petition creator gets a notification when the count crosses 25 %, 50 %, and 100 % of the goal — those are the milestones on the public timeline.

You can only sign once. There is no unsigning — a signature is a public record.

Following a representative​

Following is a light action: it flags that you care what a representative says or does.

How to follow:

  1. Open a representative's page.
  2. Click Follow.

You'll get a notification when they post an official response on their profile — a comment marked as coming from the representative themselves (not another citizen commenting on their page).

Click Following again to unfollow.

Commenting​

Comments count as participation too — they're the record of what citizens said publicly about an issue, petition, or representative.

Requirements to comment:

  • Verified email.
  • Membership in the target's community.
  • You aren't rate-limited (see below).

Comments have a 2 000-character limit. Content is public and tied to your account.

Rate limits​

To keep the platform readable, comments are rate-limited per user:

  • Bursts (a few in a minute) are fine.
  • Sustained comment spam over an hour gets throttled.

If you hit a limit, the UI tells you when you can try again.

Flagging content​

If you see something that breaks the rules, flag it:

  1. Click the ⋯ menu on a comment, issue, petition, or announcement.
  2. Choose Flag.
  3. Pick a reason — Spam, Abuse, Misinformation, Hate, or Other.
  4. Optionally add a short description.

A moderator reviews the flag. If they agree, the content is hidden (replaced with a placeholder that says it was removed by a moderator) and the resolution is written to the audit log. If they disagree, they dismiss the flag.

You can only flag a piece of content once. Repeat clicks don't escalate the signal.

Next: Notifications →