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Re: [atlarge-discuss] online voting



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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