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Vote taking software



Hi,

	Now that the possibility of vote taking as a regular event
 looms over us, bothe here and in -policy, I went and researched what
 is available on the net. Since the usenet voting is the most popular
 one that I know about, I went looking for those; hoping that I can
 modify them enough to be useful for other than usenet newgroup
 votes (and add things like pgp verification)

	I found 3 different pieces of software, and I am leaning
 towards the second one. Is the license acceptable?

	manoj

======================================================================
 a) netvote, comp.sources.misc, Volume 30 Seems to be an small, ad-hoc
    script that sits on an alias pipe (like, /etc/aliases contains
    vote_address: "| <your directory>/cfv_handler" ). Requires the
    script to be edited to run each new vote; not really as complete
    as some others.

X# Copyright (c) 1991 by        Dave Hayes - dave@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov
X#
X# All rights reserved.
X#
X# Permission is given to distribute these sources, as long as the
X# copyright messages are not removed, and no monies are exchanged.

	Definitely non-free
======================================================================
 b) Usenet Volunteer vote takers (http://www.uvv.org/uvv.html) have
    better looking stuff, and have a lot of software that operates
    together. UseVote 3.0 seems to be wonderful (as far as collecting
    votes for news groups; I have to see if that makes it any less
    useful for us -- I hope not). This program wants to see a file
    that contains all the votes (hence mailagent can be sued to
    separate the mail, or a new account maybe created to catch it
    all). 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
(c)1993, 1994 Ron Dippold All Rights Reserved

Distribute freely, use freely, please notify me of any nifty
improvements you make, and please distribute the entire package
including all source code and all docs.  And I'd appreciate it if you
let me know when you run a vote with it, and any comments you have.

UseVote should be relatively bug free, and bugs tend to get reported
quickly.  However, I'm not responsible for anything that happens when
you run this.  You assume all risk.  This paragraph is here because
lawyers can be scum.
----------------------------------------------------------------------


UseVote has the following features:
   * Successfully used in over a hundred group votes.
   * Generates ballots for multiple item votes.
   * Processes single item or multiple item votes.
   * Handles preference (single transferrable vote) voting.
   * Includes interactive editor for editing of those "strange" ballots
     on the fly, if desired.
   * Allows yes, no, abstain, and cancel votes.
   * Can flag certain invalid addresses.
   * Automatically generates mail acknowledgements to voters, including
     descriptive messages for many voting errors.  All messages are
     customizable.  Honors "Reply-To:"
   * Allows specification (by users) of real names in body of message
     if their system doesn't allow it in their "From:" field.
   * Allows conditional voting laws far in excess of anything allowable.
   * Has a fairly sophisticated duplicate vote detection mechanism.
   * Generates nifty sorted mass ack, bounce ack, and final vote lists
     which can be directly included in your ack and results postings.
   * Counts results and generates nifty results tables for direct
     inclusion in your results posting.
   * Allows overriding previous votes with abstentions.
   * Tracks vote dates and votes in error
   * It's been "field-tested" in several actual votes, including major
     reorganizations.
   * Companion software, UVSplit, helps manage multiple different votes
     simultaneously.
======================================================================
 c) Electronic ballot, used for POSIX standards doc balloting.
    (experimental). No license that I could see, so unusable. Also
    from the usenet volunteer vote takers web site.

    Sets up a mechanism so that the all voters are registered, and
    have a special ID they need to know to vote.

    The system has reasonable defaults, but it's fairly configurable;
    it lets you use external files to specify what kinds of votes can
    be cast, where the mailboxes are, and all sorts of other things.
    Unfortunately, you currently have to read the code to understand
    how to configure it.

    Voters run "vote" to cast ballots.  The recipient of the votes runs
    "ballot" to count ballots.
    
    "vote" insures that the ballot has all the right fields,
    then tags a checksum on the end.
    
    "ballot" runs through the incoming mailbox and sorts the votes into
    bins.  In doing so, it validates the balloter and the checksum,
    and sends the sender an acknowledgment of the receipt of the vote.
    
    Other software that needs to be written are a utility for tallying
    votes and a utility for processing invalid votes.  We have contributed
    software that parses valid votes once they're binned, but it's not yet
    ready to post.
======================================================================

	manoj
-- 
 When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship. Harry
 Truman
Manoj Srivastava  <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E


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