[wplug-board] ballots and bylaws revision

[David Ostroske]

Patrick, let me respond to your questions first, then I'll respond to
Vance. I'd like to keep all of this on the -board list, Vance, so I'll
forward anything you have to say, verbatim.

On 9/19/06, Patrick Wagstrom <pwagstro at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> Who is in charge of the creation of the ballots for the board and bylaws
> revision?  I think we need to get these out ASAP.

That would be me, the Secretary. By our Absentee Balloting special
rule of order, the earliest that I can send the ballot papers out
would be the 23rd. (The latest for announcement is the 30th, but I
won't let this wait that long.) I do want to wait until Monday before
I send out any sort of notice, because I still need to hear back from
Chris and Greg on whether they accept their nominations. I'll also be
posting draft ballots for the Board to review.

The bylaws allow the absentee balloting process to be established by
rule. The language for the Absentee Balloting rule is here.
http://www.wplug.org/pipermail/wplug-board/2005-October/000510.html

> I've also come up with an idea to help prevent some vote fraud.  The
> issue is that right now anyone can send in a ballot and say they're
> someone else.  Well, an easy way to prevent this problem is the way that
> GNOME handles elections, through the use of a token.
[...]

That would work well enough, but Vance's method is easier to
implement, and the security trade-off is minimal. (Correct me if you
think it must be tightened.)

We'll need to tweak the reception process somewhat. Ultimately, I must
receive the sealed ballots, and the voters need to be contacted,
though I don't feel comfortable doing the contacting myself (since my
name will be on the ballot, and that amounts to an unfair advantage in
my eyes).

We could designate one of the tellers that were (pre-)selected this
year to handle collection duties, and allow him to send confirmations
from <vote at wplug.org>.

I should note that we broke the rules by selecting tellers at the
nominations meeting. They're supposed to be selected at the meeting in
October. In the interim, though, we could tap them to handle
collecting and acknowledging the absentee ballots. No doubt, they can
be re-nominated to act as tellers in October.

The "tellers" are Mike O'Connor, Bob Turley, and John McCarter. Mike
might be keen on doing this duty. He's got the technical
infrastructure to handle sending email confirmations, and he lives
close enough to Squirrel Hill that he could receive the sealed paper
ballots from whoever checks the mailbox.

> Also, who is contacting Greg Simkins about his nomination?  If I don't
> hear back by tomorrow afternoon I'll take care of contacting him.

I've contacted Greg about his nomination.

> --Patrick

-- 
David Ostroske <eksortso at gmail.com>