Re: Three common voting errors - how to avoid them
Neil McGovern <neil@halon.org.uk> writes:
> Yes, it would. And so would expecting people to read the mail. Given
> that there were a number (28?) sent before voting peoriod started, I'm
> not convinced that people will actually do that. I'll be looking at
> automating how the announcements are sent out in future to help this.
I get bitten by this every time and it drives me nuts. I realize that the
point of sending out the ballot before the opening of voting is so that,
if there are last minute errors, they can be corrected before any votes
are counted, but my reaction upon seeing the ballot is always to vote
right away. I know there's a time stated in the message for when the vote
begins, but of course it's not in my local time zone and I don't think in
GMT, so I usually only do the conversion after I get the bounce saying
that the vote hasn't opened yet.
And then I have to save the message somewhere, remember to get back to it
after the vote has actually opened....
This is a very annoying workflow that makes things harder for voters.
Can't we stop doing this? I'd much rather see the ballot sent exactly
when the vote is open, so that people can simply reply to it immediately
and vote. I'm sure I'm not the only person whose mail workflow is not
well-designed for keeping around a message that I need to reply to at some
set point in the future but can't reply to immediately.
I'm happy to have the cost being invalidating all existing votes if the
ballot has to be revised and reissued for some reason. I don't recall
that happening, so I at least don't think it happens that often.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: