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  • From: "Sergey A. Lipnevich" <sergey AT sourcemage.org>
  • To: sm-discuss <sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] voting process
  • Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:05:30 -0500

Jeremy Blosser (emrys) wrote:
It's not this absolute, and it can be dealt with via policy. An example
policy would be:

- voters cast votes
- counter publishes the vote
- someone says "I contest these results"
- a larger group, perhaps a defined group of a few leads or something,
looks at the votes and confirms them
How can you confirm them? The audit trust is broken already. Moreover, the correct results don't exist in the worst case, because they've been destroyed by now or mangled with.

- if this group finds an issue, it is dealt with
The only way to confirm something by this time is to ask everyone to vote again. So the vote now is know to this group. What if this same group is what regular developers are intimidated by?

- if this group doesn't find an issue, they say so
- if the contesting person still contests, *then* we move to a stage where
people confirm their specific votes, and those who claim a disparity
would produce their signed receipt of their vote from the counter to
prove the listed vote isn't theirs

Yes, at some point we perhaps have to publish the vote to resolve a
contest, but it would be an extreme case. We don't need it for regular
elections or even basic types of contested votes.
...or we avoid will these wiggly dances altogether and open votes at the end of voting period.

You see, the paradox is that if you're intimidated you're even more so required to vote openly, in order to stop such intimidation. Anonymizing votes doesn't eliminate the key issue it's supposed to work against. If people want to vote against something but are afraid to stand up for it, we might as well give it all to decide to this elite group of elders without any vote whatsoever (which are not supposed to be afraid to vote openly; it's not such a bad idea BTW).


Sergey.




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