I have a situation where users would like to use a public folder
calendar to announce events, and track the responses as a way to see
who has "approved" the events. They would like to do this rather then
sending an email to everyone, then everyone replying: "yes, we
approve".

Anyway, I know that the meeting response is basically returned to the
users' default folder instead of the public folder.

But does anyone have a creative way to resolve the needs of the users?

I even tried creating a new user in AD, a sort of service account, and
gave everyone permissions to this user's calendar. I would then go to
my profile, open other users' folder, open the service account's
folder, and created a meeting. I invited one of my fellow coworkers,
and they accepted. In the calender, I see that my coworker was
invited, but it again will not show the response.

The only way I could get the response to update, was to open Outlook
under the service account's profile. At that time, everyone would then
see the response.

Any ideas?