[OSGeo-Discuss] Voting process (Re: OSGeo Membership and/or upcoming elections)

[Alex Mandel]

On 05/16/2014 03:41 PM, Jorge Sanz wrote:
> 2014-05-16 17:14 GMT+02:00 Jeff McKenna <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com>:
> 
>> On 2014-05-16, 12:06 PM, Jeff McKenna wrote:
>>>
>>> - maybe this is the most interesting, the Open Source Initiative used
>>> "evote" (https://github.com/mdipierro/evote), will paste the full email
>>> from OSI:
>>>
>>> ****
>>> At the Open Source Initiative, we just used E-Vote to conduct a member
>>> election, and I was pretty happy with the process (I was the admin):
>>>
>>>   https://elections.opensource.org/
>>>
>>> We contracted with E-Vote's author, Massimo DiPierro, to set it up for
>>> us, which he did a fine job of.  I expect we'll continue to use it.
>>>
>>> It does use people's email addresses to send them their ballots, but the
>>> ballots themselves are anonymous.  (Technically, the election admin
>>> could use database access to figure out who did what, I suppose, but
>>> that's the only point of trust; the election itself can be verified by
>>> others without anyone's identities or votes being revealed.)
>>> ****
>>>
>> More on the evote project (I wonder if we should contact Massimo), the
>> 'features' listed on the OSI site:
>>
>> - The system is open source and anybody can check the source code. The
>> code is small and written in the Python language. This makes it easy for
>> professionals in the field to check it.
>>
>> - The system can run as a service and one installation can run mutiple
>> elections. Anybody can login into the system, create a new election,
>> register voters and managers, and customize the ballot using an easy to
>> use WYSIWYG interface.
>>
>> - The system communicates with voters and managers by email.
>>
>> - Voters do not need to login into the system to vote. They only need to
>> click on the link in the notification email, fill a web form and submit.
>>
>> - Each voter can only vote once per election.
>>
>> - Results are computed automatically at closing of the election and
>> published.
>>
>> - Voting is completely anonymous. Even a hacker with a complete database
>> dump of the system would not be able to link voters to ballots.
>>
>> - Each voter can check at any time that his vote has been properly
>> recorded and not alatered.
>>
>> - Each voter can independenty and at any time perform an election recount.
>>
>> - Upon voting, each voter receives an email recipt containing a copy of
>> their filled and anonymized ballot.
>>
>> - Managers are notified by email when a new vote is cast and receive a
>> copy of the anonimized ballot.
>>
>> - All ballots, anonymized and digitally signed, are published, along
>> with instruciton to verify the digital signature.
>>
>>
>>
>> -jeff
>>
>>
> 
> Hi Jeff, all
> 
> After spending some time and several trials with opensource.org system I
> haven't been able to perform a successful vote test. We need to create as
> many questions as votes and even it seems to work, afterwards it doesn't
> collect the votes correctly. It's a pity because I like the system,
> apparently is meant for asking just one question of the three types offered
> (ranking, select or multiselect). With more time I would try to solve the
> issue I came across. It was funny to see Karl Fogel has opened several
> tickets on this project (he's the author of the "Producing Open Source
> Software" classic book).
> 
> On the other hand, and that's important, I think we need to know who is
> voting to identify which charter members are not active on their only
> required activity for the foundation so far. That system focuses seriously
> on anonymity and for this matter at least the CRO needs to know who is
> voting and who is not.
> 
> 
> On the other hand I've done some tests with opina and I think it fits all
> our requirements.
> 
> 1) Import a CSV of contacts into the system http://i.imgur.com/WWh24mI.png
> 2) Customize the invitation mail http://i.imgur.com/o2OPHfu.png
> 3) Select a private survey sending a different password to any member
> http://i.imgur.com/hM5EG6D.png
> 4) Receive an email http://i.imgur.com/K2OdjQF.png
> 5) Access the survey (you have the choice to save and continue later)
> http://i.imgur.com/nIcgmKs.png
> 6) Track who voted, see results and export to CSV and SPSS formats
> http://i.imgur.com/BlHOvZe.png
> 
> All that can be used as a service for free, there is no pricing model, and
> if we are going to use it a lot we can think afterwards on installing it at
> our server (I'm wondering if we can use this type of survey soft to ask
> ideas and feedback to our members, but that's another story).
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> 

If we really want to do it ourselves, LimeSurvey is quite robust.
http://www.limesurvey.org/en/

Not hard to install mysql/php etc...

Thanks,
Alex