[H-GEN] Re: [H-ANNOUNCE] Constitutional amendments

[Anthony Towns]

On Thu, Jun 25, 1998 at 01:20:15AM +1000, Robert Brockway wrote:
> > Why?
> It is because I have never felt comfortable with the idea of allowing one
> person to get more than one vote.

And I'm not comfortable with the idea of forbidding a bunch of people from
getting any vote.

Whatever you do, it's not going to be fair in some sense.

> If A proxies to B, B will vote the way
> B wants to vote but get 2 votes in doing so, B will not (imho :) vote the
> way 'A would have voted' with one of them. 

Ummm, then you can say "Don't think. Just vote foo." on your proxy.

Personally, I wouldn't give a proxy to anyone I didn't have a touch more
faith in anyway, though.

> Of couse it could be argued
> that A will choose a like minded person to proxy to, but this is
> subjective.

The only scenario that I can see where this might be any sort of a
problem is if a bunch of people who don't care proxy to other people
who don't care, and they just vote randomly on some issue.

But that's what the "abstain" option is for. And in any case, if they
*really* don't care, they don't have to give a proxy of any sort.

I don't see a problem here.
 
> > We're a computer user group; surely it's not beyond us to realise that
> > physical presence isn't always a crucial factor.
> That is true.  I would, for example, be happier with voting via
> teleconferencing rather than the current proxy scheme.  Teleconferencing 
> would be more representative of 'not being there in a physical sense on in
> an intellectual sense' than proxying.

Ummm, no. It's a little difficult to do the teleconferencing thing when
you're off on a family camping trip, or when you're out at a party,
or when you're working late on a saturday [0] making COBOL code Y2K
compliant, or a host of other things.

On Thu, Jun 25, 1998 at 01:31:55AM +1000, Robert Brockway wrote:
> I have an idea.  How about absentee voting to replace the current
> proxying.

The `current proxying' allows you to direct exactly where your vote
should go. The only reason that doesn't work at the moment is because
there hasn't been any indication of what would be voted, even ten
minutes before the SGM itself starts.

> I also suggest we create an electoral officer position to oversee the
> election, especially if my suggestion above is implemented.  This person
> could be appointed by the president perhaps.

Is this not the secretary's role?

On Wed, Jun 24, 1998 at 04:54:48PM +0100, Craig Eldershaw wrote:
> Rob wrote:
> [...]  I don't see how a secret ballot could be had
> with any other system (unless a completely automated system was set up
> to receive electronic votes, record who had voted, but only record the
> tally totals (so it only reports that: Craig, Rob, James and Ian voted,
> and that for the presidential post Bloggs got 3 electronic votes,
> whilst Smith only got 1).  But that would be a lot of work to set up).

<aside>
Schneier's _Applied Cryptography_ devotes a chapter or so to online
elections, and presents various procedures that allow for anonymous
voting, with the added bonus that anyone can check their vote got
recorded correctly, and that even the electoral officers can't work
out who voted for whom, or fake the vote count without detection.

Very neat stuff.
</aside>

Cheers,
aj

[0] So, has anyone worked out whether there's a meeting on /that/ weekend?

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

      ``It's not a vision, or a fear. It's just a thought.''
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