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

[Glynn Foster <Glynn Foster Sun COM>]

Hi,

> We can't know this until we know the voting system in detail. Various
> proponents have asked the opponents to explain at concrete examples  why
> the anynoymous voting is not more secure. To do that of course the
> voting system has to be known.

Okay, there seems to be a lot of confusion about the election proceedure
and it might be good to clear some of this up.

When the elections are announced, all the foundation members get sent a
mail - to see the format of this mail, have a look at the vote gnome org
mail archives [http://mail.gnome.org/archives/vote]. You can see how
this mail is generated by looking at the mail-ballots.pl script - the
validation token is generated by a MD5 hex hash of a secret string that
the election committee decides on and the email address of the
foundation member. You can see this script in the gnome-foundation CVS
module.

When the foundation member votes, they simply reply to the mail, making
sure that they keep the validation token in their mail, and choose the
candidates they wish to vote for.

When the votes are counted, each mail is checked against the proper
validation token for the member. This is the vote-counter.py script in
the gnome-foundation CVS module.

Now, what we're proposing is -

	o remove the header details from each of the mails, so 
	  that the vote is anonymous, but still archive them on
	  vote gnome org
	o Add the validation token to the subject of the email so
	  that members can easily verify that their vote has not
	  been altered.

Hopefully this clears some things up. I really don't see what the
problem is. If people want their vote to be public, they can simply add
some details of who they are in the body of the email. I think that the
above should suit everyone, except those who like browsing other
people's votes. 

Giving the member the right to make their vote public or not is the most
important issue IMHO, and the GNOME Foundation should encourage the
right to privacy if desired.

Glynn