Re: election plans

[Ali Abdin <ALIABDIN aucegypt edu>]

> > What about just using snail mail to some neutral address? 
> 
> That'd require everyone to go to the post office etc.
> 
> Personally, I tend to only write snail mail under the following
> three conditions:
> 
> a) it's really, really, really important to do so
> b) I have an envelope handy
> c) I have a stamp handy
> 
> If either b) or c) fails it may already take weeks to get a snail
> mail from me.
> 
> So we may risk that people don't go to vote just 'cause they're too
> lazy to do it.

Not only that - but some post offices may take a while with letters - 
they have a tendency to get lost, or late (so the vote could be 
'inaccurate'). 
 
> And we also have the problem how to find out whether someone has
> voting rights or not. Since I think that it's much easier to write
> any name as sender on a letter and bring it to the next mail box.
> 
> Remember that it doesn't help at all if people need to sign the
> letters since we'd need to have signatures from all people first so
> we can check whether they're correct or not.
> 
> That's why people doing elections by snail mail usually get some
> special ballot from the election office which has some kind of seal
> on it.
> 
> But sending out such stuff would cost us a lot of money.


I recommend that for this election (since there are time constraints) 
that a public vote be done. But in the future (for referendums?) we could 
have a method set-up for secure/anonymous voting.