| From: | <WDDM webmaster> |
|---|---|
| Date: | Thu, 19 Apr 2007 19:10:02 -0700 |
| Subject: | Re: [WDDM] Elections |
|
Dear all! The code for possible secret ballot elections (votings) is finally ready for you to test at http://www.world-wide-democracy.net/vote/vote.php It is for now filled with hypothetical names of candidates, so you can play with it as you see fit, as the results will be discarded. If we decide to use it, the system will then be fed with names of real candidates, and the voting will start from the beginning for real. Each voter has to select an arbitrary encryption key. This key is not stored anywhere on the server, the voter must remember it if they want to see and change the vote later. If you are interested in technical details: Each voter's vote for all candidates is stored in bits of a small integer and encrypted with the voter's key. Later if the voter wants to view/change the vote, all possible votes are generated and encrypted with the resubmitted key. If the key is valid, one of all possible votes will match the encrypted vote. If the key is wrong, no one will. Of course, the vote has to be transmitted to the server, also the voter's encryption key is also transmitted for each transaction. These transmissions are not encrypted (so far). The probability that somebody outside WDDM would want to bother intercepting our votings at this point is negligible. Administrator (me) could also (very easily) intercept the vote before encryption. I have no interest in doing that. Actually I am even storing the voters' usernames in the database scrambled, so that even if I have to look into the database during the voting, I do not see the names in the open, and have the same amount of information as all the other users. If you do not trust me, somebody else would have to check the code, or run the whole thing. User WDDMAdmin cannot vote. At least for the test, the intermediate tally of the vote is shown after each vote, and then after each vote change. The main purpose of this is to show that your votes do not end up in some black holes, but are immediately reflected in the total counts. If you do not like/require this, it can be turned off. If you forgot your WDDM passwords or even the WDDM usernames (needed to log in before you can vote), just following the links from the above voting page should be enough for you to retrieve all this information (it was also posted before here: http://www.world-wide-democracy.net/forum/read.php?6,100,100#msg-100). I hope that about a week, or at most till the end of April should be enough for you to check this voting system out. During this time, we can decide how to conduct the real vote. See Doug Everingham's note below. Possibilities are: 1. Using the above secret ballot without changes. 2. Using it without showing the total vote counts till (a) voting closing date, (b) for a certain period only, after which it would be revealed for the rest of the voting period. (Any other suggestions for changes?) 3. Using it with each voter to choose afterwards whether to disclose to the voting group her/his vote as Doug suggested below. 4. Using open vote on this mailing list in the same way as for the Charter approval process. Please submit your discussion and votes on these four possibilities in the open in this mailing list if possible by the end of April. At the same time, send in further interest in or nominations for Board positions. Mirek P.S. Of course, for example Emmanuel Charpentier (http://leparlement.org/) has a better voting system (definitely for establishing the group positions on various issues). But it would take time to connect it to our user database. This can be considered in the future. Doug Everingham wrote: My personal preference is for open voting, |