[Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots

[Tim Starling]

Brian wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>wrote:
> 
>> 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