Re: Yes to Publicity! Not to Anonimit! Was: Re: GNOME Foundation Annual Elections - proposal

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Sat, Sep 13, 2003 at 11:44:50PM -0600, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> say the foundation has 400 members, 50 of them in fact cast a ballot but
> the list of vote lists 100 codes and corresponding votes. Those
> interested in the election (and having cast their vote) may check the
> result and verify their own ballot but that are only 50. the remaining
> members are unlikely to check since they have already shown not to be
> interested in that election. Even if they do, each has a 75% chance that
> it is correctly recorded that they did not cast a vote. Since those that
> are interested in the election have no opportunity to comment to any
> non-voter: "I see you voted for X, but you always said he was a bad ..."
> it is unlikely that any vote tampering would be detected. (Note that to
> fix most votes you only have to add a few votes, so realistically
> probably a list of 65 votes would suffice and only 15 of the 350
> non-voters would be in the position to recognize the fraud,)

But that's pretty much the same with public voting.  Pick 15 people that
don't care and use their names.  I don't see public voting being of much help
here.  Yes you could ask.  But have you asked previously other people that
you don't know, who they voted for?  Or even someone you knew.

Also obviously if more people vote, the probability of such bad results
are very low.  Because of the voting system where we vote for multiple people
and the first X get in, the chances still are a single person could get
in on just a few extra votes, but the chance of getting more then 1 or
at most 2 people in on a fraud if 50% of people are voting is almost nil
if people check their votes.  Even two people is still less then just 1/5
of the board, so not possible to take over.

If 50 people out of 350 are voting, then it's far simpler for a company
to push their "team" in (4 out of 11 if I remember the numbers right)
which is much more then you can do with fraud.  And if the voting is public
you just make all your emplyees vote for your "team".  If it's anonymous,
then perhaps a couple of people will vote for the "team", and then the
management has not clue who voted for or against.  You can also have them
vote for people outside the company that are "sympathetic" to the company,
and get by the "at most 4 from each company" rule.  Say you are a big
company such as Sun, then I'm sure you can scrounge up 50 employees to vote
for "your" people.

I think the percentage of people who actually voted is pretty large so your
scenario is moot.  Plus we I think keep the pool of voters fairly "clean"
of non-contributing people, that is, people that don't care.

Also of course if only 50 out of 350 people vote then the result can hardly
be called democratic anyway.  There is large probability that such a result
doesn't at all reflect the popular opinion of the community.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
                       -- Otto von Bismarck