Re: Election status

[Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>]

(silly postponed messages folder)

On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 11:43:04PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> 	I am thinking of setting up a system that mails voting each
>  developer s random keyword unique to them, and then publishing the
>  encoded vote data, which should ensure openness and correctness of
>  tallying while preserving the privacy of individual developers. 

If we're trying to enforce accountability on the secretary, this doesn't
work. For example, if say, Bill and Betty both happen to vote the same
way (123-, say), then you can mail them both the same keyword (foo),
and publish:

	Bill <bill@debian.org> voted
	Betty <betty@debian.org> voted

	Votes:
		123- foo
		321- bar

and not mail the keyword "bar" out to anyone, thus giving yourself an
extra vote (Bill and Betty would both look for "123- foo" in the vote list,
and, seeing it, be happy).

If you publish

	Betty <betty@debian.org> voted
	123- 9c2db5b7fc93da293dae597be57dcf50

and tell people to verify it by using:

	echo "$YOURNAME voted $YOURVOTE $YOURCODE" | md5sum

ie,

	echo "Betty <betty@debian.org> voted 123- foo" | md5sum

you wouldn't be able to do this (Betty would be happy her vote was
counted, but Bob would be pretty peeved). On the downside, this allows
people to use that info to go up to whoever they voted for and say "Look,
see, I did vote for you {give me that wad of cash you promised,don't beat
me up}", which is theoretically undesirable, but harder to fix. It's
possible that you can only choose at most two of making it impossible
for the secretary to stack votes, voters being unable to prove who they
voted for to candidates, and being able to change your vote/not know
who's winning the vote 'til it's over.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

  ``Debian: giving you the power to shoot yourself in each 
       toe individually.'' -- with kudos to Greg Lehey


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