Brian wrote:
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.
[...]
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.
My hope is that the opposite is true. I'm interested in building protections against attacks such as vote-buying into our software, so that we can have wider participation in elections without leaving the system open to subversion. Ultimately the decision is not up to me, but I don't want technical deficiencies to be used as arguments against wider participation.
-- Tim Starling