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

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 25 Jun 1998, Anthony Towns wrote:

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

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

Some do do that currently, but a more open 'use my vote as you see fit' is
currently allowed.  It should be tightened up.
 
> 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.

What you don't carry a laptop and a satelite uplink everywhere you go? :)
 
> > 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?

Currently the President has responsibility for running the election, with
the except of elections for President which are handled by the Secretary.

> 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).

Just to clarify, Craig actually wrote this.  Sounds like a cool idea too
:)
 
> <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.

Cool :) 
Cheers,
	-Robert

--Robert Brockway B.Sc.  Email: robert at blake.humbug.org.au,
				robert at humbug.org.au, r.brockway at uq.net.au
                         WWW:   http://www.humbug.org.au/~robert
Immediate Past President of HUMBUG (http://www.humbug.org.au)