[Theforum] Changes to the VotingReqs document

Elfur Logadottir elfur at elfur.is
Tue Feb 5 15:23:40 CST 2002


From: "Michele Foster" <michele at wordpro.on.ca>

| Elfur ...
|
| First of all .. my understanding is we can and will have different types
of
| votes.  For the sake of simplicity, let's refer to a vote as those
questions
| in which there is a "distinct" set of people (individuals, i.e. userID's)
| that are allowed to vote on an issue.  The second is polls, which are open
| to anyone.

yes.

| Does this make sense?  Do you see why the system MUST know what my userID
is
| in order to attach my vote to it?

this is all part of my original argument. that we have two types of votes
a) votes that can be changed (and are therefor not anonymous)
b) votes that are anonymous (and therefor can't be changed)

http://lists.evolt.org/theforumarchive/Week-of-Mon-20020204/003019.html
http://lists.evolt.org/theforumarchive/Week-of-Mon-20020204/003024.html

i'm arguing the case that this can be done, since jeff said that it couldn't
be done. but i'm probably not doing a good job explaining it, since no one
agrees with me :)

| There are a couple of ways we can deal with this.  Probably the easiest is
| to define a Vote Type... and if I remember the DB discussions, this has
been
| taken into consideration (for different reasons).

again, something i suggested ... an addition to the vote type:
a) poll
b) changeable vote
c) anonymous vote

| For example, if we wanted a COMPLETELY anonymous vote, we can have that.
| However, what we cannot have is the ability to change the vote after
| originally cast.  So, what would happen is .. let's call this anon_vote ..
I
| can vote, but only once and without the ability to change what I voted.
Why
| can't I change it?  Because an anon_vote won't record my UserID.

yes it will, but in a different table so it can't be linked to your voting
results, but still record that you voted.

| So, does this make sense?  The long and short of it is .. if we want the
| ability to have a 100% completely anonymous vote, then we cannot allow for
a
| person to change their vote afterwards.

absolutely, and again: this is what i started with.

| IOW, we have to decide which is more important.

and the decision is between
- changeable non-anonymous voting
            vs.
- anonymous non-changeable voting.

not between intregrity vs. anonymous. because both anonymous and non
anonymous can have equal integrity.


  Now, the other thing to consider is that in order to
| maintain the integrity of the vote, the system needs to record who has
voted
| already.  So, even tho the vote cast won't be attached to what was voted,
| you can't allow the same userID to vote more than once and you have to
make
| sure that the voting person is allowed to vote.

which is why i suggested an addition of another table to store only the
questionID and the userID. and when the type of voting is anonymous then the
userID insertion into the result table would be void or 0 or something
similar.

| Anyway, this has gotten to be a lot longer than I hoped .. I hope it helps
| and makes things clearer.

well, you're basically arguing my case ;)

thanks
elfur




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