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

[Brian]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>wrote:

> 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
>

That is great to hear, and I do apologize.