[Elections] Re: Who votes? how does voting work?

[Daniel Vainsencher]

Ugh, you raise the scepter of security. I completely agree this is a 
critical requirement of any voting system (and, btw would apply exactly 
the same to a wiki based, manual endorsement system).

To do this right, we probably have to go the way Debian does and start 
doing key signing parties. However, I believe that if we start putting 
crypto, protocols and physical presence requirements into the system 
now, we'll never actually use it to vote. We need to first get some 
value out of it, then add on the difficult requirements.

So like I said before, I propose that version 1 be defined as 
inappropriate for any important decisions, and delay all security 
requirements to version 2.

Of course that by the time any legally binding decisions are being made 
using the system, we need it to support real authentication, and at that 
point everyone would have to do that on their own. But we can still 
create other peoples accounts for version 1, and might want to do it in 
order to get started with a reasonable list.

> [Aside: Anyone want to rate the account 'Ozzard' on SqP?]
Want to point to relevant information?

>>"people 
>>x,y,z are not on SqP" doesn't look to me like a valid reason 
>>to reject SqP.
> I wouldn't *reject* SqP; I would be cautious about making it the *only*
> mechanism, however.
Until we have security - I agree.

> I think requiring a minimum of n supporters of a proposal would work.
> We would need to discuss n.  2 is probably small; 200 is probably large.
Ok, I'm not objecting.

> The approach on UglyMUG (a multi-user game where I've been wrestling
> with admin issues for almost 16 years now) is to have no lower bound on
> turnout, but a minimum 1 week discussion and voting time (and as much
> longer as the proposers wish to allocate).  There have been occasions on
> votes that were perceived as important where people have explicitly said
> 'I don't understand yet, and hence don't want to change the status quo;
> I vote against this proposal for now, but let's keep discussing until I
> understand and can make a reasoned decision'.  That tends to heat up the
> discussion fairly rapidly!
This sounds like a reasonable approach. Implementation is pretty simple. 
I would go for this, unless something better pops up.

I'm posting a status summary at http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5835 
feel free to correct for accuracy, but lets keep the discussions here.

Daniel