Loomio Introduction

Used by Podemos, the Pirate Party of Belgium, the government of Taiwan, and lots of other organizations.  Translated into 35 languages. 

It is both software, and a community. 

They are not just discussion/chat, they also help groups “make better decisions together.”

Loomis grew out of the occupy movement, it is open source, maintained by a worker cooperative.  They first rose to prominence in Taiwan, when the government used participative democracy to draft the law regulating Uber, taking into account all the different stake holders issues. I heard about them then.   And now  widely used in Taiwan’s government. 

Here is professor Richard Wolff’s interview with the founder. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnJJX6kSNcg
It starts at 29 25

Here is the Wikipedia article. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loomio#History

Here is the documentation. 
https://help.loomio.org/en/user_manual/polls/proposal_types/#dot-vote

I have not tried the software, but it all looks very reasonable to me. 

All written in Ruby.  I like that.