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Re: [atlarge-discuss] online voting
- To: "atlarge discuss list" <atlarge-discuss@lists.fitug.de>
- Subject: Re: [atlarge-discuss] online voting
- From: Alexander Svensson <alexander@svensson.de>
- Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 14:00:34 +0200
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At 11.05.2002 07:51, James Love wrote:
>What is the current state of play with online voting? The DNSO type voting
>seems to have some good features regarding verifying how one's vote was
>calculated. Do we want public or secret voting? Does it cost money to have
>these fancy voting services, or are they inexpensive or free software tools
>that volenteers can use? Are there good articles on pros and cons for
>this?
From my experiences with the (IMHO very good) DNSO
type voting system here are some of the realities
of e-mail balloting. A system for sending and
receiving e-mail ballots must take into account the
following:
[ ] Some respondents use Blackhole lists (so the mail
must be sent from a system that is not on any
Blackhole list or allows for smtp-auth sending).
[ ] Some respondents use wrong email addresses (so
the delivery failures must be recorded).
[ ] Some respondents send the ballot from a different
email address than the one the ballot was sent
to (so the balloting system must not depend on
the "From" address).
[ ] Some respondents send blank ballots (so the system
must count them as abstentions and not confuse
them with delivery failures).
[ ] Some respondents mark ballots, but not according
to the instructions (so "blank" ballots have
to be checked to see whether they really are
empty).
[ ] Some respondents delete their ballots accidentally
(so the vote operator must be able to resend
ballots).
[ ] Some respondents send more than one ballot (so the
system must only use the last ballot sent).
[ ] Some respondents send ballots with more votes than
they have (so the system must notify them that
their ballot will not be recorded).
[ ] Some respondents reply to the sample ballot contained
in the voter information email (so the system must
notify them that this ballot will not be recorder).
In addition,
[ ] the voter should receive an acknowledgement that
the vote has been recorded,
[ ] the voter should be able to see at the end of the
election that his vote has indeed been recorded
properly,
[ ] there should be some mechanism to settle disputes
after the election (e.g. independent watchdogs
with copies of all votes),
[ ] the voters must be sure that their email addresses
will not be used by the vote operators and watchdogs
in any way except for the purpose of voting,
[ ] the voting instructions should be clear and concise,
[ ] the voting system should be as transparent as possible;
if possible, the source code should be public.
Best regards,
/// Alexander
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