On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data being released, since it allows vote-buying. Even if the numbers given by voters are reduced to the smallest values which still give the same rankings, with 18 candidates there are 18 factorial possible orderings. That number is sufficiently higher than the number of voters that a party wishing to buy votes can specify a voter-specific ticket with some random rankings, and be reasonably assured that if that ticket appears in the final unencrypted dump, then the contract was fulfilled and money can be transferred to the voter.
In 2008 the unencrypted votes were rapidly released, but I was not involved in that decision.
This year, I don't think I have been asked directly to provide this data, but it seems that the Board and election committee is in favour of it being released, and nobody else has offerred to produce the data. So I just wrote the relevant script, and am now testing it, so the results will be available to the committee and the Board shortly.
-- Tim Starling
This kind of fear mongering attitude is why we can't allow more members of the community to vote. You'd rather spread FUD about vote buying than design a system that allows the largest number of community members to vote.