Respect your audience

A while back, I was asked: “Just for fun, is it a good idea to add a ‘fake’ voting session and show results that have been manipulated, just to make people laugh?“

Honestly, to me this feels awkward and not very respectful of your audience. It could even cause the audience to lose all faith in you and in the system—Faith that you built up carefully during the initial use and opening questions.

It is difficult to first tell your audience that they have voted for real and the results are trustworthy, to then tell them: “Well, you didn’t actually vote, we’ve manipulated the results.”

Don’t underestimate the power of the voting system.

What you have to avoid at all cost is for the audience to start questioning the voting system itself. Respect your audience and be aware that they are not idiots (If they were, you probably wouldn’t want them to participate in a vote in the first place) 🙂