This letter is sent personally and has not been reviewed or approved by the rest of the
election committee, but reflects what I know to be true:
I'd like to answer a couple of Greg's points below...
First, it's important to point out that no one from ElecComm will get the key. I
don't think there's anyone on the committee that would even TAKE if, if it were
offered. Despite some rather kooky conspiracy theories, the Election Committee has
remained neutral and shall remain neutral. We have all voluntarily given up our privilege
to vote in this election, and have not supported or campaigned for any candidate. The
security of the votes has been assured through the use of a third party provider (SPI),
and despite an honest mistake on the part of the committee in creating the voter list
(which, I should point out, was not only fixed but was immediately announced to our
auditor and the community), we are very comfortable with the security of the election to
this point.
As for the decryption: we have specifically built into the timeline sufficient time that
we can evaluate the voter list and remove inappropriate votes (multiple votes, votes from
banned/blocked users, etc) before asking SPI to decrypt the votes. SPI is aware that they
are not to decrypt the votes until they get a "go-ahead" from us, and they
absolutely will not provide any results prior to the voter list being approved by the
election committee. SPI has been a wonderful partner in this process, and their good
faith efforts and the use of their server is greatly appreciated by the committee. It
should be mentioned, by the way, that they have fallen all over themselves to partner with
us and have done absolutely everything that we asked without once asking for a thing in
return.
I appreciate the high interest in this election,
Philippe
----- Original Message -----
From: Gregory Maxwell
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 11:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Election] Unqualified votes striking
On 7/5/07, Jan-Bart de Vreede <wiki(a)devreede.net> wrote:
Is the
situation only that the
edit count criteria was misapplied and nothing has been changed from
the official election rules?
Yep
Thank you, this is a great relief.
[snip]
I would also like to point out that the members of the
election
committee are currently spending a LOT of time on these elections and
that the foundation really appreciates all their hard work :)
Yes, indeed, it is a monumental task.
PS: And also to repeat: NO ONE within the foundation
(including members
of the board/advisory board) has access to the key needed to look at the
election results...
It needs to be assured that no one except SPI *ever* has access to the
key used to decrypt the ballots, otherwise the secrecy of the
User->ballot connection is compromised. I pointed out this weakness
last year, but it was not sufficiently addressed.
Ideally all determinations about ballot validity will be made final
before a single ballot is decrypted, and after they are decrypted the
key should be destroyed.
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